Meantimes
by potsiesgirl
Summary: Andie McPhee visits with her fellow Creekers right before Thanksgiving. What is revealed as she spends time with each of her old Capeside friends? Season Six Series, Story No. 4
1. Default Chapter

Boston is a city of memories; it lives them and breathes them. Anchored by history, oftentimes, it is mired by it. Non-natives hear about Boston in textbooks probably written by Bostonians, bred within the hallowed halls of any one of the colleges or universities concentrated within a few square miles of each other, anchoring the T-subway line, connecting-the-dots between a myriad of intellectual hot-spots. If you start at the very end of the Red Line, at Alewife, you'll soon hit Harvard College at the Harvard stop, then two stops after that, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Kendall/MIT.

Crossing the Charles River onto the other side, you pass the Charles/MGH stop in order to switch to the Green Line at Park Street. From there, you take the train to Hynes/ICA for Worthington College near the Institute of Contemporary Art or go past to hit Boston University (somewhere along Commonwealth Avenue) a few stops after that. Or, you can go all the way through to the end of the B route to Boston College in Chestnut Hill. If you take the Green D route, however, as most baseball enthusiasts do, you can step off at Fenway to attend the temple dedicated to the Red Sox – Fenway Park -- for schooling in a sports-centered spirituality. But if you stay on the Red Line and get off at Downtown Crossing, you'll be able to get to Boston Vis-Arts where a new generation of media artists and filmmakers incubate alongside graphic designers and animation aspirants. On the other hand, if you transfer there instead to the Orange Line, you can ride the T slightly south and get off at Back Bay, so you can stroll to Boston Bay College, just a few blocks away.

It's the day before Thanksgiving when you, Andie McPhee, embark from the Harvard Square stop on the Red Line to ride the T to Downtown Crossing. A fine autumn day, it's just one of many during your first semester at Harvard. As a new Harvard co-ed, you eat, sleep, and breathe that renowned heritage into your skin, take it deep through to the marrow of your bones, absorb it within every cellular process in your being. Especially since your father had gone to Harvard. As well as your grandfather. And _his_ father before him. So you are a fourth-generation legacy – the first woman in the family -- and you are resolved to shoulder it well.

Yet while you settle in your seat on the train, you idly note the different stops along the way, paying attention to the individual folks that get on and off, noticing details and dynamics and relations between. They shift and evolve from stop to stop. At one point, you glimpse an abandoned tunnel leading to nowhere -- the Boston subway traces its origins all the way back to the 1890s, making it the oldest rapid transit system in the United States so there are several of these – and though once, you might have found that open-ended pathway worrisome (some time ago, you were fixated on tying up all possible loose ends), you muse over more vague possibilities now, some, even whimsical. Maybe one of those dark passages leads to a fairy-land in another dimension, you fancy – a magical meantime that opens up to a brave new world. It's a silly thought, but it makes you smile. You've had that magical meantime. And it was real.

The whole summer prior, the entire year before, and half of a high school full-term before that, you spent an intervening time in Italy, among light-dappled valleys, sunny meadows, and lush, green gardens, while reveling in ancient times contemporaneous to now. In that meantime you expanded, you grew; your visions became larger, and now you see more clearly. You met new people, learned a different language, and loved diverse men. You created a new self – more relaxed amidst your pressures, open to change and evolution, settling into that sanity you believed elusive. But it was within you all the time.

So now you know that Life is more than books and grades and structure and rules. You are still driven, will always be driven, to overcome and succeed. However, you are no longer consumed, you don't feel constricted. On this day, you make a point to take a much-needed break – a trip to the outside world, as it were. You have left the ivy-covered campus of your enclosed Harvard world to visit another one you often keep at bay, because to some degree, you left it behind, long ago. Not because you wanted to, but because you needed to.

When you disembark at Downtown Crossing, you emerge from that transit underground up into a crisp, sunny day, a bit on the cold side because of a harsh breeze blowing. Your eyes spy a familiar face and you break into a grin, then a happy jog, to greet this old friend. Though he attends a school just several T stops away from yours, you both are too busy to see each other. Until now.

And as one meantime inevitably ends, another invariably begins


	2. Chapter 2

"Dawson!"

The lanky golden locks you last remember have been shorn close to his head. He looks older, mature, his features more chiseled as he approaches young adulthood, no longer a bucolic teen. You've seen photographs, of course -- your brother Jack providing occasional snapshots to keep you apprised -- but a person in the flesh is an entirely different matter. The matte or glossy flatness provided by a camera falls far short of the living, breathing, fully-dimensional being. That's all you've had for the last year and a half -- photographs and an earful of second-hand tales -- instead of the real thing.

So when you see him, relief floods through you. The uncertainty of first encounters melts away. Your own wariness about _Will I seem different? Will I seem strange? Will we even fit anymore?_ scampers into the mists of Unimportant Things because here, now, an old friend is happy to see you. Dawson engulfs you into a warm, tight embrace and you feel his gladness vibrate through. This boy, rarely known for physical affection, often construed as cold, perhaps even unfeeling, is hugging you, hard. Hugging back, in kind, you sense a delight that he does not subdue and you are happy for it. You've actually missed him.

"It's so good to see you, Dawson," you say, meaning each word.

You were never particularly close to Dawson, yet the things you share go deep, including the notion of an all-consuming dream. His were his films; yours was Harvard. Both of you have grabbed onto these steadfast anchors, intent on fulfilling entrenched desires. You also bear a strange kinship with Dawson, certainly not the deepest that you share with any specific male individual in that Capeside gang – Jack is your beloved twin brother and Pacey will always be your first love – but it is a singular one, nonetheless.

One fine spring, during another time, in a different place, you both got your hearts broken at the exact same moment, on the front lawn of a familiar house under a night sky. By a boy and a girl that even now hold places in your hearts that you will never relinquish. Yet you have been slackening that grip, bit by bit, as your own life spins ever-new forward. You who had such difficulty taking the path unknown, constantly hanging on to the stringent order of things, found that letting go was not so bad, after all. Warm climes and carefree sunshine days formed a liberating landscape, freeing you to transform the topography of your heart.

You draw back and look into Dawson's eyes – cornflower blue and smiling – and instinctively, you sense that the same does not hold true for him. Jack told you about "the Incident" (or rather, the "soul-mate sex" as he and Jen have taken to calling it, their voices lowered and sonorous when relaying the information, as if something sacred was being invoked). You don't know what's come of it, really, though from snatches of telephone conversations over the past few months – supplemented by occasional IM chats when you allow yourself to take a break from computer research for your Biology courses -- you gather that what ended up happening was what would have happened all along. Everyone has moved on.

But you have a feeling that hearts have stayed permanent. 

One shimmering, soul-rending moment on a dance floor years ago, you watched a boy and a girl hold onto each other, wrapped in a sacrosanct world that only held – would only ever hold – them. In that moment, you were forced into your first letting go. But Dawson only held on tighter. You recall his rage, his hurt, his disappointment, and even his pain, because some of it, you shared with him, once upon a time. His love was so intense and dogged, a persistence bordering on relentless, either incredibly romantic or insanely hopeless. You don't know which. Nor do you know if that's necessarily a good thing.

However, you can't tell the future. You might've spent considerable time amidst the ruins in ancient Rome, soaking up the remnants of mythological mysticism, but you are no Cassandra, prophesizing the fall of Troy, nor would you want to be. It's not that you think there's still some sordid life left in that long-dormant romantic triangle -- you know that Dawson is seeing an actress from the film he is working on, that Pacey had a new girlfriend who just recently became yet another ex and that Joey is dating a different boy, far removed from the Capeside circle – but those inklings are never far from the surface and it's a minefield you'd rather not tiptoe through. Especially when it comes to Dawson, Joey and Pacey. It always came down to these three. Still.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, you think, invoking a trite phrase that is inescapably apt.

"So have you eaten?" Dawson asks you now, reaching down to take the handle of your navy-blue Samsonite travel case from your grasp. A slight tug-of-war ensues when you grip a little tighter, resisting the gallant gesture, but he laughs, so you let go of the handle. He wants to be of service and it's a kind and generous offering.

"Thanks, Dawson," you say, adding, "Nope. You know me – always planning, ever-structured, but still, constantly rushing in the end."

He chuckles and leads you to his car, a rather utilitarian silver Honda Accord.

"Studio car," Dawson informs you, as if you were wondering. You weren't, but the clarification is appreciated. He places your luggage into the trunk, amidst a myriad of film canisters, small sealed boxes, and several clipboards, then auto-unlocks the doors so you each may get into the vehicle. "There's this little bagel shop on the way to Jack's that I always go to for Todd. It's his favorite. Mine too. This old Jewish guy – Saul from Brighton in Brooklyn -- opened it up decades ago, so it's full of color and personality. Just like him."

As he drives, Dawson fills you in on the pending whereabouts of the others – Jen will meet you at Jack's apartment later to take you out to lunch, once you've used the rest of the morning to freshen up. Jack will meet you back at the apartment later in the evening, bringing some take-out dinner before you both embark for the train station. This, you knew already, but note that Dawson does not mention Joey, nor Pacey either, for that matter. You wonder if he knows you've made plans to see Joey for an afternoon jaunt down to the Isabelle Gardner Museum to catch an exhibit you've each been keen on seeing, and that Pacey's meeting you both for a surreptitious coffee break from his office sometime thereafter. You don't believe there's any lingering animosity between Dawson and Pacey because that torrid tangle was finished years ago, but the dynamics between that longstanding trio will always perplex you. So you wisely keep this supplemental information to yourself. Just in case.

When you get to the bagel shop – aptly called "The Bagel Shop" – Dawson orders two large Everything bagels, toasted, lightly-buttered, with the cream cheese on the side, as well as a carafe of fresh-squeezed orange juice along with two small glasses. He settles you into a corner booth, next to a large plate-glass window looking out onto a rather barren alley that is surprisingly devoid of any tourists. They all look like locals and regulars. As he goes back to the counter to await your order, you realize you would never have known this place was here if Dawson hadn't shown it to you – so many of Boston's little treasures are tucked, hiding, into the seams of its quaint, antiquated, sprawling veneer. As Dawson chats with Saul about the weather ("nippy out there and getting colder") and the Red Sox ("maybe next year" accompanied by sad little shakes of their heads), you think about this Thanksgiving holiday, recalling a different one, years past. Not here in Boston nor in Providence, where you and Jack are headed tonight, but back in Capeside.

That was the year Helen Lindley came to town, catching everyone off-guard, Jen especially. Even back then, the past intruded, inescapable. A cluster of folks assembled around that outdoor feast at the Ryans, during an unseasonably warm, New England autumn day, gathering up the remnants of broken hearts still mending (Dawson and Joey; you and Pacey), tentatively reworking mother-daughter ties spanning three generations (Grams, Helen Lindley and Jen), and embracing close those whose homes were always in flux (Jack, Bessie, Bodie and Alexander). Yet at that table, offerings of gratitude bonded all and sundry, and many thanks were shared all around – for the food, for families, for friends, for peace away from tumult, for embracing strays while creating a home, for the people still loved though no longer here, and for second chances, rebuilding bridges, and the promise of many more Thanksgivings to come.

But it's a later congregation that you retain with deeper fondness. Just you six – that Capeside gang -- reconstituted around a fire at night, broken connections tentatively re-attaching, joking about Life, re-affirming friendship. Surrounded by darkness, you all found light in the center of that circle, drawing closer to each other within the warming glow of that flickering blaze. Those instants that last a lifetime are rare – few and far between. This was one of them.

The distant memory settles strong, underpinning the eddying of your thoughts, the tides of your musings. It's a surreal feeling, meeting up with old friends from a small town, upon return from your sojourns out into that larger, greater world. Almost like meeting yourself for the first time – an olden self made fresh in an altered context, yet still the same. There's a familiarity, yes, but a strange discordance too. You wonder: Will they notice the changes in me? Not just the physical ones, but also the ones in personality, in outlook, in world-view? Or will you even get that far, moving beyond mere catch-up to actual re-connection on more current terms? Conversations between old friends, if not constantly in use, are an old, worn jacket. Reaching into the closet of days gone by, you pull it out – beloved and worn – and though outdated, perhaps even torn or tattered, it still fits like yesterday, cloaking you in reminiscence. Safe and weathered, yet simultaneously, outgrown.

Dawson comes back to the booth bearing aloft two plates, filled with morning sustenance. He settles across from you and grins, exuding high spirits. As you both begin to eat – each savoring your first bites into that warm, fluffy, yet just crisp-enough bagel, buttered exactly right and slathered with whipped cream cheese – Dawson tells you about the horror movie he's been filming with Todd Carr, the hottest new director import from the UK. You remember reading all about him in the _Entertainment Weekly_ and _People_ magazines that Jack sent, always including them in his monthly care packages to Italy.

"It's a verite horror film," he explains, "a genre-bending, arty slash endeavor. Sort of like _Vertigo_ meets _Scream_."

You can't quite picture it, but you're not really good with those types of fantastical imaginings – examination of fossils and numbers and theories are more your thing these days – so you figure you'll leave those visions up to the professional image-makers. You'll plunk down your money to see it onscreen, in time. Instead, you ask about Natasha, his girlfriend, the star of the horror film. You know of her, minimally, from Jack, and you tell him so.

"She's amazing!" Dawson announces, buoyant. "We have so much in common! She's very smart and funny and the coolest girl I've ever known!"

He speaks in exclamation points, which instantly puts you on guard. He's been seeing this girl since last summer, but you know he was quick to drop her once he and Joey at last bodily consummated their meta-physical soul-mate bond. Ill-advised (and ill-fated) though that tryst with Joey may have been, this consequent reunion with Natasha was fast and awfully recent, so you are a little skeptical about his enthusiastic display. Dawson's bouncing in his seat -- on the verge of perhaps jumping up and down on it in public! – and now he's got both of your hands clasped within each of his. "She's got such energy, Andie! A real zest for life! I've never known anyone like her!"

You're a little put-off because this does not seem at all like the usually taciturn and passive boy you knew back in Capeside, but maybe Hollywood has changed him, brought him out of his shell. Or maybe he's overcompensating for yet another broken heart? Instead of angry self-righteousness and boat-races, now amorous enthusiasm and young starlets?

"Really?" the question slipping out before you could even begin to stop it. You hear the incredulity in your tone and hope it does not come off as rude. You don't mean it to be. You are just rather surprised.

Dawson grows quiet then smiles, sheepish, settling back. "A little over much, huh?"

"Somewhat," you concur, glad a sense of self-awareness still exists within your friend. He was starting to sound on the verge of a wee bit maniacal.

Dawson sighs and leans back in his seat. "I _am_ crazy about Natasha – don't get me wrong. She makes me feel-" He breaks off, searching for the right word "-atypical."

Not a romantic word, but strangely, you know it's perfect. So you smile back, encouraging.

"Atypical can be good," you say, nodding.

Dawson laughs and says, "Right now? Atypical is the best thing I got going," before he bites into his bagel once again. 

"What do you like about her?" you ask, curious, sipping your orange juice. Pulpy sweetness clumps onto your tongue and you suckle, savoring, before letting it slide down your throat.

"We don't have a history," Dawson replies, prompt, accompanied by a tiny laugh just this side of bitter -- not quite going over that precipice, but approaching it, and teetering on the edge. "She sees me as I am. No expectations. No speculations."

His answer tells you more than he probably intended and you mull over it, thoughtful. You first knew Dawson as one part of a whole, encompassing two. Dawson and Joey -- a concurrent pairing to your own with Pacey. An idealist and a cynic. The boy with all the dreams and that girl that lived down the creek. A union of soul-mates. Certainly more fated than your own coupling with a cocky, smart-aleck, unmotivated slacker – not the most obvious choice for a self-possessed, intellectual, single-minded scholar.

Yet Fate plays strange tricks. A sure thing suddenly becomes undecided. What was once thought inconceivable emerges as undeniable. For the first time, you fell deeply in love. With that slacker boy who grew to love you back, fierce, unwavering in his affections. At least while you were together. The girl down the creek broke free from that soul-mate bond and became your own brother's girlfriend. They shared a fleeting interim before he submitted to his own personal reckoning. She and the dreamer re-captured one another, yet unable to hold on, they broke apart, flailing. And in one moment of weakness, you destroyed your own bond, previously unbreakable.

"The studio was going to fire her, you know," Dawson says, drawing you back to a conversation at hand, pulling you away from these bygone musings. "Her dailies were turning out flat and unconvincing and they were going to let her go. Replace her with another actress."

"So what happened?"

"I convinced Todd to stall for more time and we went back into editing to recalibrate her performance. It worked. So we got to keep her in."

"And you got to keep your girlfriend," you comment, a sly smile on your lips, illuminating his ulterior motives.

"Yes, there was that," he responds, again sheepish.

You don't know what it is about your dynamic with Dawson that allows him to dissemble so quickly with you, that urges you to force him to do so, in the first place. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he was the one who first called you on your attraction to Pacey the beginning of sophomore year, back when you were kids in high school. He actually mediated that coming together, though perchance inadvertent. And you were the one to call him on his stubborn pride, standing in the hallway of his house with an open yearbook in your hands at the end of junior year, that black-and-white photo of he and Pacey, smiling on a printed page, yet empty of inked-in salutations or promises. It remains empty to this day.

"Do you see the others much?" you ask now, wondering if Natasha was embraced as easily by the Capeside gang as Audrey, Pacey's girlfriend. Correction, Pacey's _ex_-girlfriend. Keeping track of your ex-love's own exes is getting dizzying. There was you and then Joey. After that was Melanie, the Caribbean summer fling. Karen, the waitress one-night stand. A few nameless unknowns in–between. An almost-straying with Alex, his second restauranteur boss at _Civilization_. Now Audrey, whom you've never met but heard plenty about. Jack was never the soul of discretion when it came to juicy romantic gossip. At least with you. And Jen.

"Not really," Dawson replies. "We're so busy. But we all were at that No Doubt concert recently, the one up in Worcester? I got us free tickets from Todd."

"You went to the concert together?"

"Actually, no. _They_ all went together. I went separate, with Natasha." Dawson chuckles as he recalls something else. "We almost got arrested that night. Todd accidentally gave me VIP passes for a different date, so we tried to crash the concert from backstage. We didn't get in, but then Natasha and I frolicked a bit in the parking lot – on the hood of a car! -- and a horse-cop caught us."

"The hood of a car? And a horse-cop?" Amused, you chew your bagel bite within a closed-mouth grin that struggles to keep from stretching wider. 

"Yeah, and we were brought down to the station." Dawson's excited as he tells you this, almost giddy. "It actually became a fun little adventure. Natasha's insane, but in a good way. I'm an altered person with her. And our relationship's a whole other ballgame."

According to Jack, that was code for "this relationship is all about sex". According to him, Dawson was getting a lot of it these days with Natasha. In his humble opinion, that was the singular lure and basic foundation of their coming together. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Jack opined, especially since Dawson just recently got started with his sensual experience, and was no longer driven (nor frustrated) by sexual repression. _He's more relaxed, you'll see_, Jack told you. You admonished him when he first said so, but now, you're shifting toward giving him the right of way on this one. 

"Do you…um…spend a lot of time with her?" you ask, hoping you are being subtle. You throw out the inquiry not to get the explicit details but because you want to see if there is more to it than that. You hate giving Jack the full right of way on anything. Your time in Italy might have moderated your more inflexible tendencies, but you still incline toward competitiveness. And you are always thorough.

"We're on the set together everyday," he responds. "And we spend weekends together, just hanging around Boston. Once in a while, we take a day trip to get away." Dawson pauses and looks out the window, considering. He drinks down the rest of his orange juice, then adds, "Sometimes it's hard, you know? Dating someone in the business. Especially an actress. So many demands…" His voice trails off and he shifts, restless.

"And so many temptations?" you throw out, sensing the gist of his intimations.

Dawson cracks a tiny smile. "Yeah. Those too." He does not elaborate but you can only imagine that an attractive young actress in Hollywood gets exposed to many equally good-looking peers, often cast opposite a well-known chick-magnet, Fame expanding any such magnetism exponentially. "Max Winter has a small co-starring role in this film."

That's all he needs to say. Max Winter is a celluloid babe and a sexy rising star. So you let this pass without remark but acknowledgement hovers and you nod with a sympathetic smile. Dawson shrugs, completing the wordless exchange with a weary smirk that sits wry at the side of his mouth. You've reached the end of the meal – the plates now vacant, the carafe and glasses, empty. It signals a natural end to this conversation and at that break, you decide to let further probing slide.

"How much do I owe you for breakfast?" you ask, reaching for the pocketbook within your purse.

Dawson airily waves the inquiry away. "It's on me." At your automatic protest, he shakes his head. "It's been so long since I've seen you, Andie. You can get me on the next one. Besides, we didn't get to talk about _you_. I'm sorry about that."

"There's always next time," you say on a laugh, knowing Dawson's favorite subjects often did not extend to things outside the circle of himself. And you don't mean that in a bad way, but you know the drill. Besides, you have nothing scintillating to report anyway. "My life is full of books and experiments and Harvard, 24/7. A boring existence. Not much to talk about."

"But you had Italy!" Dawson pronounces.

"Yes," you reply, wistful now. "I did."

Back in that serviceable Honda Accord, on the way to Jack's apartment, the subject shifts to films and Dawson asks, "Did you know that the bar in _Good Will Hunting_ where Matt Damon says that famous line 'How do you like dem apples?' after he gets Minnie Driver's phone number is now a bank?"

"I was wondering why I couldn't find it!" you say, another Harvard mystery solved. You actually tried to look for it in and around Harvard Square, the day you first moved into your dorm, but was too embarrassed to ask anyone about it. "Not that I would've found Matt Damon there if I did."

"Well, he _did_ go to Harvard."

"And left a semester shy of graduation." This piece of information, you overheard in the library one day coming from a long-time Literature graduate student who apparently knew him once. Intimately. "I've been all around at the sites they filmed for _Love Story_ though. That movie makes me cry, every time."

"The T's Blue Line is featured prominently in Brad Anderson's _Next Stop Wonderland_. Its Northern Terminus, specifically," Dawson continues. "Plus, there were scenes at the Boston Aquarium and in the posh lobby of the Copley Plaza Hotel."

"Oh! Hope Davis is so great in that!"

"And then there's this amazing indie short called _Round Trip_ that takes place in South Station. It's really incredible but hard to find. We saw it in film class at Vis-Arts last year – Oliver insisted on it. One of his better notions," Dawson comments dryly. 

You remember Jack's sardonic descriptions of film-geek Oliver, Dawson's former classmate and filmmaking peer at Vis-Arts and immediately swallow a giggle. Your favorite one was _Delusions of Oliver Stone wrapped up in the head of a poor man's Tarantino, with a little bit of nebbish Woody Allen thrown in. Oh, minus the genius brilliance. That's Oliver._ "What's _Round Trip_ about?" you ask next.

"It's the rise and fall and then rise again of a love affair but the cool thing is its three major scenes showcase the same single sequence of dialogue, but rearranges it, with varied results."

"Like _Run, Lola, Run_?"

"Somewhat, but that had to do with varied timing and this has more to do with perspective and random structuring. Now, if we talk about historical period pieces filmed around Boston, well, there's a shit-load of those…"

As Dawson continues to map out Boston's filmic landscape, you revel in the excitement and passion in his voice. You realize that movies are to Dawson what Italy was to you – a form of salvation, the meantime space where you can go to immerse yourself into new visions and revised contemplations. But as you continue to listen, caught up in the vibrant cadences, the fervent rhythms of his tone, you start to wonder: Were movies Dawson's meantime or were they actually the _one_ singular dream in his life?

For some people, one dream is all they can manage, that one thing consuming them so completely that everything else is just a pale reflection in comparison -- ill-fitting projections of that passion that cannot ever live up to the one, true obsession. For others, dreams can shift and change, expanding to welcome new additions to the old ones, comfortably perching alongside them. You have Harvard now – and it was a singular dream for so long -- but you hope that in your own life, there was space for a few more. Because you would very much like to fall in love again. Someday.

When Dawson drops you off at Jack's apartment, once again insisting on being gallant and taking your suitcase for you, Emma is there, waiting to let you in. You've met Emma before – her band, Hell's Belles, actually played at a bar in Harvard Square near the beginning of the school year and Jack came down, with Jen in tow, to make introductions and hang out for a little while. The others were still processing through the aftermath of "The Incident" and then, the busyness of Life and school, new jobs and shifting priorities, prevented further visits. Emma and you hit it off quick and you like her very much. One day, you'd like to live in London and she enjoys telling you all about her own growing up years there. You'd love to chat with her further about these things, but right now, she's on her way out, only staying this long to ensure that you are well-ensconced before leaving.

"I've put a kettle of water on the stove," Emma tells you, after placing a warm kiss on your cheek and offering you a welcome hug. She instructs Dawson to put your suitcase in Jack's room, her tone brisk, and he does so, muttering good-naturedly about the "bossiness of Brits." She ignores him, rolling her eyes, and links her arm through yours to settle you onto the couch. "Just relax and have a spot of tea while you wait for Jen. The Tetley's is right here," she says, pointing at a bag of tea pouches on the coffee table. "Along with the sugar and cream," she adds, motioning toward a glass bowl full of granulated white crystals and a tiny ceramic pitcher filled with half-and-half.

"You really didn't need to go through the trouble," you laugh, sitting down and arranging yourself comfortably.

"No trouble t'all. I only wish I had time to chat properly. As it is, I'm running late but wanted to stay and greet you. I won't be back until very late, so I wanted to make sure I saw you before you and Jack go off for this American holiday of yours. Dawson?" Emma inquires, turning her attention toward the boy sauntering towards the door. "You headed back to Vis-Arts or the film set?"

"Vis-Arts."

"A ride then, if it's not too much of an imposition?"

"Sure."

Emma grins her appreciation and tosses her handbag over her shoulder. "Right then. Have a lovely holiday, Andie," she says, kissing your cheek good-bye and then striding to the door.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Andie," Dawson adds, following her outside, shutting the door behind him.

"Thanks," you call out, in their wake.

Lying back, you lay your head against the sofa cushions and close your eyes for a moment. Since you've returned from Italy, you grab onto small instances like these – solitary spaces to breathe. Just breathe. You used to never take the time to do so. Sometimes, lately, you still forget to. On campus, your workload is chock-full of challenging courses and novel personalities to negotiate. Harvard is a place full of folks much like you – all adamant energy, fervent ambition, and incisive intellect. It's a constant whirlwind, daily. You thrive in that arena. But you like your alone-time too.

When the kettle whistles itself ready, you busy yourself with creating your cup of tea, tossing a Tetley bag into one of Jack's mugs proclaiming, "Gay, And Groovy!" and pouring the boiling water over it. This mug makes you laugh. There was a time when easy humor about this most integral part of his being was impossible to effect. Now, it's par for the course. As you lean against the counter, sipping your tea (two spoons of sugar and a splash of half-and-half added), you idly glance about the apartment. It's actually your first time here, surprisingly enough.

The common living room space still evinces Emma's more significant feminine decorative hand, but MAXIM, GQ and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED magazines lie scattered on the kitchen tabletop and some of the coats hanging on the rack in the corner and the shoes lined up against the wall next to it are decidedly masculine and large-sized. You also note the box of Cheerios perched on the kitchen counter in a place of honor (as was Jack's habit) and a huge bag of STARBUCKS coffee grains is tucked against the wall by the coffee-maker near the sink (Pacey's surreptitious contribution, care of a weekly raid into his office's magnanimous stores of the stuff). It will only be a matter of time before those distinctive male personalities intrude more visibly out here, but in the meantime, those manifestations are obviously confined to their respective bedrooms. Emma makes sure of this, most probably.

You hear a key turning in the front lock and wonder if maybe Emma forgot something. The heavy door is pushed open and a pretty, curvaceous blonde stumbles in, stops short upon seeing you, and remains there on the threshold, staring.

"Who are you?" she asks, not a little tart. "New flavor of the week?"

Immediately on the defensive, you reply, archly, "Andie McPhee. Who are _you_?" But as soon as the question is flung out, you answer it with your own photographic memory. Audrey. This is Audrey.

"Oh, you're Jack's sister," she says, relaxing a bit. "I should've recognized you from the pictures in his room. I've got a shitty memory. I'm Audrey Liddell. I'm Pacey's- I used to date Pacey," she adds, coming further into the apartment, weaving a little, and letting the door swing shut behind her with a slam. "Sorry," she apologizes, sparing a quick glance behind her. "I forgot that it does that."

Her eyes briefly flash a raw intense aching and then it skitters away and she's looking at you again, inquisitive. "Here for a visit?"

"Um…Jack and I are going to Providence for Thanksgiving," you answer, sipping your tea and eyeing her, carefully polite.

You wonder what she's doing here at this time of the day – doesn't she have classes? – and especially when none of the apartment's occupants are home. But then you recall that she's not exactly on everyone's "happy list" these days. Emma told you how Audrey bungled several working band gigs recently, performing drunk and disorderly. Jen explained that she and Joey weren't talking, especially in the aftermath of her break-up with Pacey. Jack informed you that she slept with a boy that Jen was interested in and that the shit hit the fan at that No Doubt concert Dawson told you about, ending with Jen, upset, and all of them thrown out as a result of a brawl between Pacey and this other guy. Audrey takes a few steps closer now. She looks a little frazzled, her cheeks somewhat flushed, and a slight glaze coats her blue eyes. You realize she's tipsy, maybe even smashed.

"And you?" you inquire, gentling your tone. You are the last person that should judge her and you do not want to, because your own track record is less than pristine. Besides, you don't really know Audrey at all.

"Just stopping by," she tosses out, blithe. "I'm returning these, actually," she asserts, raising her hand, her index finger stretched upward, twirling the key ring like a mini-hula-hoop, the attached keys jingling. "Since I've moved out of the Pacey Love Shack, there's no need for me to have these in my possession anymore. Or so he's reminded me, anyway," she adds, a sarcastic muttering. "Via cell phone. But very nicely, of course. Always the gentleman, that one."

This last statement sounds faintly acrimonious, immediately making you wary. It's unsettling standing here, face-to-face with this most recent ex-girlfriend of Pacey's. Reminds you of a time you tucked away, that you willfully rendered inaccessible, remote. It was an era full of things you once did that you normally would never do, after your world fell apart, twice, in rapid succession, book-ending a summer spent away in an institution. You found comfort in someone's arms that were not Pacey's. Dated someone that did not deserve you in order to make-up an unconscionable lie so he could "save" you. Used sex to try to lure that boy you loved into your arms again. Cheated on a college-entrance exam because it became the one, singular thing you could possibly maybe control. Lent a boat to a fellow broken-hearted pal for a foolhardy attempt at retribution. None of it ever made a difference. It never does. It never will.

You don't know Audrey. However, you _do_ know her pain.

"Would you like some tea?" you ask her, at a loss for anything else to offer her, but suddenly feeling a protective empathy toward her.

"No, thanks," she says with a lopsided grin. "I'll be on my merry way soon." Audrey comes up close to slap the keys onto the kitchen counter next to you. You smell liquor fumes, strong and pungent. It's just past 11:30 in the morning and she's already hit the sauce. Generously. In spite of yourself, you grow troubled. You reach out to grasp her elbow, firm but kind.

"Are you okay?" you ask, looking into her eyes, concerned. During another Thanksgiving long ago, the one that you recalled just an hour or so earlier, a tall brunette with doe-brown eyes told you, in an empty kitchen, with a gaggle of loved ones waiting outside, _Andie – as a veteran of multiple break-ups with the same boy, I know what you're going through. And I just wanted to let you know that the dark nights pass. Eventually, you _**_will_**_ find peace._ It's ironic that you remember this now, facing another girl who's loved and lost Pacey, remembering something that other girl said – the one girl that gained his love right after, and will probably never lose it, ever. "Look, I know we don't know each other, but I just want to say that those dark nights? They'll pass. Eventually, you _will_ find peace," you say now, echoing that far-past sentiment, bringing it to the present in the hopes of mollifying yet another hurting heart.

Audrey roughly shrugs off both your gesture and your words, stepping back, teetering a little unsteady. But she rights herself, quick, and glares at you. "I'm fine!"

The fast shift from breezy nonchalance to suddenly affronted catches you off-guard. As do the next words out of her mouth.

"But since you're here, maybe you could give me a little counseling on the benefits of being in the Pacey J. Witter Ex-Girlfriend Club? I mean, there's so many of you- I mean, **us**- floating around these days. Are there rules of conduct to follow? Do we swap recipes for great sex? Are there code words I need to know about? Any secret handshakes?"

You're speechless. But as you try to formulate a compassionate and coherent answer to such a nonsensical query, she continues spewing forth more aggressive questions.

"So tell me, what's it like to become just friends with Pacey, after? I mean, c'mon, girl-to-girl – the sex was amazing, right? How do you get to the point where you can be in the same room with him and not keep thinking about him inside of you?"

You stare at her, aghast.

"I'd rather not- That's not something-" You're stumbling over your words because you really don't know what to say. Sensual images, determinedly buried, have burst forth at her instigation. Your nerve-ends remember, more corporeal. That flush of ancient memory heats your neck and cheeks.

"I mean, he's so big and thick and _hard_! So _incredible_ in bed! Those hands! Those kisses!" Audrey's listing is relentless as well as visceral. Her strident tone tarnishes, rendering something special, tawdry. "Admit it, you think about it still, sometimes. How could you not? He was your first, right? Yours and Joey's?" You gasp when Audrey intertwines your experience with Joey's. It was similar but not the same. "You must've lain awake so many nights wondering when he was with her if he was pleasuring her as well as he did you. Or worse, if she was pleasuring him more than you ever could."

Innately, in spite of her latest escapades, you know that Jack likes Audrey a lot, enjoys her sharp retorts and straight-up exuberance. Jen adores her, says she's fun and hilarious. She's Joey's roommate and probably her best friend at Worthington. Pacey loved her, and being Pacey, he would _always_ love her, even if he wasn't _in love_ with her any longer. Plus, she's drunk, hurt, angry and sad.

But right now, this minute, you _hate_ Audrey Liddell.

"What the _fuck_ is your problem?" you lash out, slapping her hard with just your tone, wanting to with a flat open palm as well. But you restrain yourself from doing so, that curse word in the middle of your question lacerating your own ears as well as the air between you and her. "Is sex _all_ you ever think about?"

Audrey looks stunned. You've apparently struck home through the fog of her unaccountable rampage of inappropriate queries. Stumbling back a few steps, she seems to grab onto some semblance of her senses. Her eyes fill with a wretched anguished sheen.

"No," Andrey chokes out. "It's what I think about to forget the stuff that would _really_ kill me."

She whirls around and before you can stop her, she's rushing out the front door, surprisingly nimble considering the state she's in. Before you know it, Audrey's gone. Breathe, just breathe. You realize both of your fists are clenched and your gut is twisted into an anxious, angry knot. And you're shaking, trembling all over. You grab that mug of tea and gulp down the cooling liquid, fast, to soothe this sudden distress.

When you awoke this morning, facing the onset of this day, you prepared yourself with strong purpose and resolved intention. You wanted to keep an aloof distance from your past because you are different now, changed, and content in that evolution. With Dawson, you sensed out the contours of an old skin and found yourself shedding it without much apprehension. You were pleasantly surprised at how uncomplicated it was, how simple. But now someone who doesn't even belong to that past, who's not even a part of your present except in the most peripheral of ways, has dumped the more tumultuous aspects of your history, unceremonious, into your proverbial lap, unexpectedly exposing old wounds. You need another cup of tea, and different memories, to placate your stirred-up emotions. You've still got the rest of this day to get through.

Re-settling yourself on the couch, you cast back to more recent memories – your own, separate from anyone else's, the ones you hold close, keeping you steady. You loved several men while in Italy. Let yourself be loved _by_ them. Most of these encounters – okay, three! -- were intense, though short-lived. These particular Italian men approached love – and love-making – so differently. Mutual passion, concentrated loving in the moment, and then an angst-free release, accompanied by a continued easy affection when it was over. These were your "Meantime Boys", the ones that led you through that interim between what you were and what you would like to become.

Italy also exposed you to great passions and examples of loves that last a lifetime. Your aunt has loved her Italian husband forever and he, her, probably for all time. You know that sounds sentimental, an ideal straight out of _Cinema Paradiso_, your favorite romantic Italian film, with its reel of romantic kisses perpetually playing in one's head. The notion even smacks of "soul-mate-dom", a state you're not quite sure is so healthy, at least within the iteration you've seen spun during your previous Capeside experience.

Yet your time in Italy showed you that Love was an entire evolving spectrum instead of a treasure box to discover and horde. It put into perspective the fact that though you once shared a wonderful love with a boy you would never forget, those aftermaths weren't about forgetting but flowing forward instead. That boy's heart was big enough to keep you in it, regardless of where he gave it completely. And your heart was big enough to accept what he offered then and now, fulfilled with the changed terms.

Looking down, you reach out to pick up that set of keys Audrey has left there, forlorn on the kitchen countertop.

_But since you're here, maybe you could give me a little counseling on the benefits of being in the Pacey J. Witter Ex-Girlfriend Club?_

Benefits? Once loved by Pacey J. Witter, you are loved for a lifetime. Maybe it's not in the way you want nor how you _wish_ he could love you. But it's real. This Club is full of Meantime Girls, learning to love, and let go of love, fluidly, as part of a larger _act_ of loving rather than as a predetermined person _to_ love. That's most definitely a good thing.

Nope, you don't know Audrey at all and still don't know her. But you know yourself. And that's all that matters.


	3. Chapter 3

She knocks at the door, just one hour later. It's an hour that sped by fast. That sixty minutes, you took for yourself, curled up on the couch against soft plump pillows, thumbing through one of those masculine magazines, reading about feminine wiles and taking in artfully posed photos of scantily-clad celebrities and supermodels. You've idly sipped two more cups of Tetley's tea -- the British blend, bought and sent to Emma straight from her family back in London. Coffee and tea are much stronger across The Pond – deeper, more robust, highly caffeinated – so perhaps you'll be bouncing off the walls the rest of the afternoon. Or perhaps not – you don't need caffeine to be "bouncy," that's for sure. And anyway, maybe it will subdue the more maudlin tendencies emerging at Audrey's unexpected visit. You don't want maudlin right now.

You do not like to dwell. So you won't.

But when Jen knocks light on the heavy door, you know it's her by the way she whimsically transforms it into a jaunty tattoo. She's the most jaded person you know – fifteen years of high society, hard-living Manhattan life made her the girl she was, before you even met her. But Capeside modified her during those critical teenage years, creating a kinder, gentler version. Much wiser. More grounded. You remember Jen as a tow-headed blonde, troubled and angry, one of a pair of troublemakers. Jen Lindley and Abby Morgan. You didn't know if you could trust her then because Abby made it her own personal mission to make your life hell. Yet somehow, though they were often a pair, they usually acted as individuals, on their own.

The individual that was Abby discovered and shared with all and sundry a most private note meant only for your own eyes. A note that later, alone in your car, clutched in the trembling hand of a blue-eyed boy that refused to let you go, led to a tender declaration, while all around you the rain poured down, pounding against the rooftop and slashing against the windows. Yet inside, there was only a shimmering truth so all-encompassing, you both were afraid. But it was a welcome fear, and as you embraced each other, you both embraced what that fear wrought – a love that was strong, deep and very, very real.

It was a love that saved you.

But when you got to know the individual that was Jen, you found that she was flailing, in search of her own salvation. She sought it out in uneasy friendships, ill-fated romantic revisitings, drunken revels and irate outbursts. Jen wanted love that year, but it did not want her. Then Abby died, an accidental drowning at the end of a dock, while a party wound down just beyond. And Jen fell apart. In the end, Jack found her, himself broken after a year of painful reckoning, and they put each other back together again. You went away that summer – yourself, shattered -- and they were there for each other. When you came back, she was changed. And so was Jack. So, too, were you.

That was such a long time ago. These days, Jen's become the unofficial sage of the gang. She likes it more than not, but on occasion when she does not, she comes to you and only you. She took care of your beloved brother in your absence -- twice -- so you give her singular venting privileges outside that circle of Capesiders. They only want to see her as their astute counselor instead of a girl with her own demons and growing pains. Except for Jack of course. Jack's seen all of Jen's warts and bruises, tended to all of her wounds and helped heal every cut, seen and unseen. Just as he had always done for you.

Tossing that glossy periodical onto the cushions, you get up, feeling more cheerful. Pulling open the door, you find Jen grinning on the other side of it, holding aloft a package of jaffa cakes.

"I come bearing gifts," she says, laughter lurking beneath her tone, those expressive hazel-green eyes twinkling. Jen sets a blue rectangle package direct into your outstretched hands. "The wonders of shopping online!"

The smile on your face spreads wide in answer. In that Harvard Square bar, after Emma's last band encore, you and she and Jen talked merrily about London adventures. Emma was born and raised; Jen visited as a child with her parents. You've lived in Italy, have visited other foreign cities, but surprisingly, the only time you've spent in London has been during layovers in Heathrow Airport, awaiting a flight to someplace else. You know that the British Airways first-class/business lounge has showers that pipe in soothing tropical sounds and has a makeshift waterfall and fountain right next to the bar (your father _insists_ on McPhees always traveling abroad on first class, despite your protestations over the unnecessary expense of it). It even has full-length lawn chairs that are perfect for rejuvenating naps in-between flights (including soft, fluffy pillows!). Yet London itself is just grey skies and fascinating accents to you. You'd definitely like to know much more of this most famous city.

Over beers that night, Emma and Jen described the divine culinary properties of jaffa cakes, memories of that round base of hard sponge with a jelly center ("They call it the 'smashing orangey bit'," Jen clarified, tossing a sardonic glance Emma's way) and its topping of chocolate sending them both into raptures. Launching into a good-natured squabble over the best brand (the new ones as opposed to the original McVities) or whether the treats were "cakes or biscuits" (currently classified as a cake, the British government apparently wanted to get it reclassified as a biscuit so that it would come under a higher tax bracket, Emma informed you), their passion for the treat made you hunger for sweets and travel both. One day, you'd like to snack happily on those divine treats, sitting on a bench in Leicester Square, enjoying a rare sunny-breezy day, watching all the people passing by.

"Whaddya think of pizza?" Jen asks now, bringing you back to tasks at hand.

"Um…rhetorical question or serious inquiry?" you respond, mulling over the question. "Because I can easily put forth several thoughts on that subject. For instance, the pizza in Florence is not as good as that in Naples, but you can still get great Neopolitan-style there, well-representative of the tastes of southern Italy…"

"Whoa!" Jen says, stopping you. "Rhetorical! I was thinking we could go to Pizzeria Regina in the North End for lunch. Will that pass muster?"

"Most definitely," you reply, chuckling. "I love that place!"

"Ready to go right now? I have Gram's car downstairs."

"Yup. Let me just get my purse."

You cross, swift, to the coffee table in front of the couch, place the jaffa cakes there for now and hope that Jack or Pacey do not make any unexpected visits back to the apartment, thus making short work of these delicacies before you return. Pausing briefly, you grab up a paper napkin and a stray ballpoint pen to scribble a threatening note, signed with your usual smiley face, to ward off any possible transgressions. Scooping up your handbag, you bend to snatch up Audrey's recently returned keys, throwing them into your purse. You realize you forgot to ask Jack where the spare keys were and instead of searching high and low or calling him up during class, you'll just take this set with you.

But you'll leave the memory of that earlier visit deliberately behind.

After locking the door, you follow Jen to the elevator, getting an updated gossipy earful about Grams and her main man, Clifton Smalls ("Going strong, staying long," Jen chuckles, then snickers, gleeful, while you choke on a laugh). It's still breezy-cold outside as you both exit the building. Shivering, you wonder if you should've packed a parka instead, but it's only a brief stroll up the street to where Gram's car is parked. Apparently, Jen hit the jackpot in finding her spot so close by -- a rare gift or great karma. Or both. Grams drives a champagne-colored Volvo, a good, sturdy, dependable car that she maintains well and keeps shiny and clean. It smells like coconut-mango inside, the scent borne aloft from tiny aromatic packets hidden throughout the car – tucked in the sides of every door and pushed down, hidden, into the seats.

"Grams is in her tropical mode this week. Last week, it was all about the lavender and sage but when I told her lavender made me think of medicines and old people, the next thing I know, we've switched from Old Country Garden to Other Country Island," Jen explains while you both settle into your car seats.

"You can be so mean," you say, shaking your head.

"I didn't intend to be!" Jen protests. "I was just kidding. But I have to admit, I actually think this fragrance fits the new-and-improved Grams better. And me, of course."

"True enough," you reply, cracking a little smile.

You picked this expression up from Pacey a long time ago and whenever you say it, you think of _him_ saying it, his tone perfectly-pitched between jaunty and sardonic. Relationships leave souvenirs in scattered phrases, remembered expressions, the sound and feel of shared intimacies. They stay with you, lingering residue of past loves, settled tenacious beneath your skin despite all later alterations.

Jen fixates on the road, her eyes scanning the lanes and openings before her. She seeks out opportunities to scoot forward fast, weave into spaces to speed the car ahead, cognizant of wayward drivers who do not follow the rules of defensive driving. She's a crafty driver, patient yet aggressive when necessary, and always, always aware of everything around her. You're not sure why she decided to drive to North End because you know parking is always difficult and expensive. Taking the T would've been more cost-efficient. But when you ask, she shoos away the inquiry, says something about Jack giving her money for discount parking at the Parcel 7 Garage near the Haymarket T. Besides, she explains, she needs the car for the errand she's running after she drops you off at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum later.

"One rare good thing about the almost-finished Big Dig is that there's actually more parking available around North End," Jen comments.

"That thing's been 'almost-finished' for years now," you say, somewhere between amused and exasperated. The "Big Dig" is the Central Artery/Tunnel project, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority's over-budget, multi-billion, decade-long attempt to construct a solution to downtown Boston's congestive traffic problems. But it's turned into the "Big Headache."

"The I-90 extension to Logan Airport is supposed to open at the beginning of next year. That's only a few months away," Jen points out.

"I'll believe it when I see it," you retort. "And as for 'more parking available,' that's more _paid_ parking, not necessarily on the cheap."

You've always been keen on budgeting things to within an inch of their lives. That's why ill-estimated and pricey city projects like the "Big Dig" as well as exorbitant parking fees as a result of it really get your goat. You might have been born into money, but instead of frittering away colossal excess, you tend toward stringent moderations. A long-ago high school homework assignment comes to mind. You and a smart-aleck boy argued over the merits of purchasing an extravagant Viper while trying to balance a barely-there domestic marital budget. The past settles present again. Determined, you prod it back to the shady, obscuring corners of your consciousness.

"Yeah, well, the parking's on Jack," Jen reminds you and then adds, quirking a smirk, "And so is lunch." Both of you laugh, relinquishing the proverbial last word to that absent boy. Besides, you've arrived at your destination.

The North End was Boston's first neighborhood and olden times rub up alongside the contemporary everywhere you look. Paul Revere's house is here. And Old North Church. Even a burial grounds. History thrives here, not at all banished from sight, nor from heart or mind. Pizzeria Regina was Boston's first pizzeria, greeting customers since 1926 (a fact you looked up on the Internet after your first visit there, so impressed were you with their culinary prowess). You adore their delicious pizza – made old-style in a brick oven and from an old family recipe. Having had pizza pie in Italy, you know that this version of it is the closest thing you can get to a great facsimile of the real thing.

After walking several blocks northward, a wordy neon sign greets you both, pointing the two of you inside. Once entered and seated, a sometimes brusque, sometimes not waitress comes to take your order. A quick glance at the menu, and a brief consultation later, Jen orders the ten-inch sized Pomodoro Formaggio to share (the menu proclaims "fresh chopped tomatoes along with four cheeses - Mozzarella, Ricotta, Pecorino Romano, and Parmesan. Sprinkled with fresh basil and Regina's distinctive garlic and oil sauce," already making your mouth water). Piping up, you add two large Diet Cokes and a smile. The waitress notes the addition on her small pad of paper, then bustles away, emitting a noise that sounds surprisingly like a soft _harrumph_. Neither of you take this personally.

"So what's new, Miz-Doctor-in-Training?" Jen asks, settling back in her seat, awaiting your conversational lead.

You could tell her about your classes – biology, inorganic chemistry, mathematics -- all technical and challenging courses you find both dreadful and fascinating, depending on your mood on any given day. All are just necessary markers you are checking off on that steadfast road toward your medical degree. But it's not enthralling subject matter nor is it really everyone else's idea of a good time. Jen would feign interest, of course, like the good pal she was, would nod and utter niceties. Keep you talking about your rather mundane studies as if it were the most absorbing thing in the world.

And you could while away this lunch tossing small talk back-and-forth -- chat about Jen's own classes and about her possible new vocation as a crisis-line counselor. That, actually, _is_ interesting, but you would probably get to it near the end of the meal, cutting the conversation short as she drives you to the museum, laughingly throwing promises at each other of "next time, we'll get to that next time." But Jen is not just some acquaintance to stave off before you get to your next appointment. She's so much more than that to you. Because she's so much more to Jack.

Time is short, so you move straight to something substantive, to something you were going to leave behind.

"Audrey came by the apartment earlier."

If silence could thud, it does, right then.

"You're kidding!" Jen throws out, her mouth dropping open, just slightly.

"No," you reply, calm, as if you just told her that the sun rose that morning, as it does every single day. "She dropped off a set of keys to the apartment."

"So how did _that_ go?"

"I think she was drunk."

"When is she _not_ drunk these days," Jen mutters, not at all kindly.

Your thoughts skim over that earlier encounter with Audrey. Should you reveal the specific details of that conversation? Would a rehash exacerbate a still tense situation between them? Not that you want to do Audrey any favors, but why bother dwelling on distasteful things?

"So, um…how was she?" Jen asks carefully. Beneath the recent irritation, you sense a stubborn sense of concern. She does not want to care. But she obviously does.

"I don't think she's doing all that well," you tell her, taking this opportunity to practice your best professional bedside manner. "Jen – I think she has a serious problem."

"Yeah, I think so too," Jen throws out, sarcastic again, pique nudging aside her momentary empathy.

"No, really – I think Audrey's bordering on alcoholic. You should really keep an eye on her."

Jen's gaze turns laser-like and she leans forward, searching your face, intent. "What did she say to you?"

"What are you talking about?" Your question is an initial counter-punch to what could be a follow-up barrage of inquiries. But _you_ threw the topic out there in the first place, so you'll have to take this one on the chin.

"You're being so nice and concerned. I can't help but think you're overcompensating. Was she nasty to you?" You glance away before you can help yourself. "Ah ha! She _was_ nasty to you!"

"It doesn't matter," you say, starting to rub your finger at a random spot on the tabletop. You notice that you're in need of a manicure and mentally add that to your list of "Things to Do Once I Get to Providence." Or maybe there would be time to get this done before you leave tonight? You spread out your hand to give your fingertips a cursory once-over. When you look up, you see this does not pass Jen's notice and immediately close that hand into a loose fist, dropping your eyes again.

"So what happened?" Jen asks, taking up her own professionally-caring counselor tone, one finger of her hand that rests on the table-top, softly tap-tapping.

It's not that Jen doesn't really care, because you know she does, but the roles you play elsewhere have a way of infiltrating other arenas of your life, regardless. Who you are _everywhere_ comes from a part of you, within. These things are not inextricable. Though you have some misgivings about telling her those details too salacious for recounting, you feel compelled to be truthful. Raising your eyes, you meet hers head on.

"I don't like her," you state flatly. And then you paraphrase what Audrey said to you.

"Wow," Jen responds, falling silent when she sees the waitress approaching, holding back her thoughts for now.

You both are quiet as you grab slices from that plate set before you. Putting the conversation on hold, you each concentrate on that first bite into the triangular tip, always the best. Every single ingredient coalesces to the center of that doughy disc, and that tiny tip of the pie encompasses all those flavors together, so you savor the sharp blend of four cheeses in your mouth with that initial bite, a zesty burst with each chew.

Washing it down with a generous sip of your Diet Coke, you flash to a sunny afternoon at a café in Florence, enjoying your first pizza pie while brown-haired, dark-eyed Guiliano looked on, grinning. And later that night, he was the one you shared your first kiss in Italy with. Much later that month, you shared even more, in the fading twilight, tumbled on your bed in your Aunt's villa while everyone else was gone at a Festival. Such a multitude of "firsts" that you resurrected, far from a place that only offered the proliferation of "again," over and over.

But "again" only happened for some, not all.

"So do you really think we're all a part of this Club that Audrey spoke of?" you toss out after another bite, keeping your tone cavalier and light, resolute in your intention to maintain your past as something far away from you – a detachable element of yourself that you can observe and examine from a neutral distance. This morning caught you off-guard. You've had some time to become better-armored.

"I was never Pacey's girlfriend," Jen replies, after daintily gulping down yet another bite and chasing it with a swig of her Diet Coke.

"But you had that sex pact with him," you remind her.

Jen's double-take is almost comical and you give way to a hearty giggle.

"Yeah, Jack told me. Last year actually. No harm."

"No foul?"

"None whatsoever."

You don't know why this is so. Pacey and Jen intended to share no-obligations-sex to soothe away that meantime between broken hearts and mended souls. Not soon after, Pacey began to fall for Joey and Henry found Jen. Perhaps because the pact was already ancient memory when Jack told you, it did not resuscitate any reflexive flashes of upset. Those happened every once in awhile, especially in Capeside, but never in Italy.

If you heard about the pact back then, it would have hurt you, made you angry. Because that one summer, Marc was _your_ soothing meantime while you struggled to put every separate piece of you into a reconstituted whole again. Still you never received absolution. You held onto your anger, let it flare in random moments, but then you got ruthlessly focused, barreling your way through any pain with a gritty smile and a long task list full of boxes to check off. And you _did_ check them off.

Every. Single. One.

So when Jack let this particular piece of information slip during one of his occasional visits to you in Florence, you had already pushed it far behind you. Getting happily drunk on good wine and warm bread, soaking in a lazy sunshine-afternoon, he said, _Oops!_ and you laughed, uncontrollably. The two of you toasted the past, gulped down the wine, and threw the glasses against a nearby tree, shattering countless shards into the grass below. Afterwards, you threw the empty bottle at the tree too. It just clunked against the bark and fell, intact, to the ground.

Some things break so easily. Some things never do.

"Well, that was me and Pacey being desperate and sad," Jen explains, shrugging. "And we never fulfilled that pact, so no, I'm not in the Club. I'd be happy to serve as mascot though, if you want," she adds.

"Not a mascot," you say, knowing that despite the absence of sexual intercourse, Jen and Pacey share an intimacy that's special, even if purely platonic. "Perhaps an honorary member?"

"Sure, honorary member works for me." Then Jen grins and asks, "What kind of people are we? There's so much incest in our little gang! We're Melrose Place, revisited. But no crazy Kimberly."

"Well…" you say, letting the implication hang out there, large and obvious.

"Oh my God, Andie! I can't believe you went _there!_" Jen laughs, covering her mouth with her hand because she's in the middle of chewing.

"But seriously, I wasn't kidding earlier," you say, steering the conversation away from past recollections, guiding it to now. "I think Audrey's really in trouble."

"We're back to that, are we?" Jen replies, amused. "Andie -- she threw sex with Pacey in your face!"

"Like I said -- I don't like her," you answer, mentally stomping down hard on any traces of residue ire within. To Jen, you present a calm, concerned face. "But still, she _is_ sliding fast into a downward spiral."

"You're saying I should forgive Audrey then?"

"I learned the hard way that mistakes made in an instant can push forgiveness out-of-reach for far too long," you tell her, shrugging. "Until it's too late, sometimes, to rectify anything at all."

"I can tell you've already forgiven Audrey," Jen says, adding, "You always were one to forgive faster than most. Present company grateful for that fact, by the way."

Jen's alluding to an incident that was not her fault in the first place. One night, back in high school, you experimented with something that almost took your life. Tiny pills that made you feel good for just a little while, allowed you to go somewhere else for a time, even if it was just in your head. Someplace beyond yourself, beyond a failed romance, beyond incessant studying, beyond endless expectations. You just wanted to forget the stress of _accomplishment_. Then everything fell apart. And you put it all back together again.

It's what you do. What you _always_ do.

_The thought of leaving all of my friends...I mean, you guys are the ones who have supported and consoled and...understood, unconditionally. But look at us now. We are a mess. And let's talk about why, starting with last week's fiasco. Ok, enough with the blame Jen game. If I don't, you shouldn't. Yes, she had them. But I took them. It was my fault. And Pacey, Joey, Dawson... You guys are so lucky. Do you have any idea how rare it is to have friends that you've known your entire life? So please don't underestimate that. Because in the end, you always go back to the people that were there in the beginning. And in the beginning, there were the three of you._

"But she slept with him, you know? I mean, she knew I liked him!" Jen protests.

"Audrey slept with someone else while she was with Pacey?" You try to recalibrate your thoughts to fit what Jen is saying, your mind still lingering in the past.

"No, they were broken up by then."

You're confused now. "Then what was that brawl about?"

"I think Pacey was defending her honor or something."

"Jack made it sound like he was defending _your_ honor."

"Well, you know Jack – he's always wanting to defend _my_ honor. No, I think that was more about Pacey's feelings for Audrey than his for mine. I don't think Pacey even knew I liked C. J."

Two things hit you at the same time – one, Jack fudged his version of that night's events to you, making it seem like it was all about Jen and two, Pacey hit another guy his ex-girlfriend slept with, even though they were broken up. He did the same for you once, though the circumstances were vastly different. And _you_ were the one that fudged the version of that night's events.

"What do you mean -- Pacey's feelings for Audrey?" you ask, interrupting Jen's explication of all the current dynamics existing between she and Audrey and C. J.

"Huh? Oh, well they still care about each other, of course. I mean, it's _Pacey_. And I arranged it so they could meet up at the concert. So they could hash things out. The break up was kinda bad."

"I thought Dawson arranged it."

"Dawson gave us the tickets. I made sure to invite them both."

So Pacey and Audrey broke up. Jen liked a boy named C. J. C. J. apparently liked Audrey. Audrey slept with C. J. Jen arranged for Audrey and Pacey to make up. Pacey punched out C. J. when he found out he slept with Audrey. Capeside's white knight, ever-ready to the rescue. But why was _this_ damsel so worth rescuing? By all accounts, she wasn't the most deserving person for this fisticuff advocacy. Especially not according to your own very recent impressions.

Despite being blonde, Audrey is the anti-thesis of you – not interested in good grades, willfully frittering away her expensive education, a creature of impulse and non-existent planning, happy-go-luckily weaving her way through a privileged and party-full life. She's a good times girl, a transition for Pacey, someone to fill the stop-gap of his in-betweens. Despite his many flings before this, Audrey was his first real relationship after Joey. So, technically, she was his rebound of sorts. But then again, he went straight from you to Joey back in high school. And Joey could never be mistaken as neither transition nor "in-between."

"Do you think he still wants to get back together?" you ask Jen, an old familiar distress starting to unfurl deep within, despite your best intentions to squelch it. It's not that you ever want to get back together with Pacey yourself – that's long over. But he deserved better than the harpy you encountered back at the apartment. You want more for him.

"C. J. and I were never together."

"No – I mean Pacey. With Audrey."

"What? Oh, I don't think so." Jen pauses, thoughtful. "Well…I'm not sure actually. We rarely see Pacey these days. Or Audrey either, for that matter."

"So you and Audrey and C. J. have re-created your own torrid triangle? A tug-of-war between two girls for the heart of one boy?"

A flash of something glimmers in Jen's eyes momentarily – an inadvertent pained reflex, mirroring one of your own. Then those hazel-green depths grow clear again, unperturbed.

"Something like that, I guess."

A part of you wants to go back to that flash, excavate its origins, even though you have a notion of what the genesis was. Jen was part of an original triangle that preceded the one that's locked in place now. In the beginning, it was she and Dawson and Joey. You heard about it, second-hand, the explanation accompanied by Pacey's wry commentary, when both of you had nothing to do with them, when you were all about each other. Yet still, you observed from afar as Jen tried to get Dawson to love her again. But he loved Joey. And then suddenly, Joey was _Jack's_ girlfriend and there was a new permutation of couples to grow accustomed to. And Jen became Dawson's most steadfast friend instead. Yet he never stopped loving Joey.

It seems no one ever stops loving Joey.

Jen's eyes fix on your face, searching. "What's up, McPhee?" She's using that gently probing tone, the one she uses when a crisis is about to occur. Or when the crisis has just passed and you are sitting there, surrounded by brokenness. But you are not broken. You fixed yourself a long time ago.

Your thoughts wrap around past incidents, squeezing out wistful recollection. An empty high school corridor while the rest of the school cheers and jeers in a gymnasium just beyond. A boy and a girl, alone, hanging on both ends of an illicit confession. Concern transforming to rage, in an instant -- one instant -- and he was gone, along with your love, both shoving their way outside into the night air.

They never came back again.

"Nothing," you eventually say, after a short, contemplative silence. "Just trying to get things straight in my head."

When Jen chuckles, you send her a bemused look and she continues, "The other day, Jack and I were hanging out on campus trying to make sense of our Popular Culture class notes and he said the same thing. We just started cracking up because you know Jack – he always finds little slips of phrases like that funny. He told you about our professor, right?"

"The one he thinks is cute?"

"The one that came out of the closet to him in a parked car after driving him home after a frat party. And then he proceeded to hit on him. And when Jack resisted, he gave him a lowered grade. Jack was really pissed, as you probably well know."

You can only stare at Jen because actually, you did not know this at all.

"Yeah," you concur, weakly. Jen's going on and on about how Jack ended up handling the situation and you nod as if you've known all along, as if this were a secret you both were privy to. But _you_ weren't. And you are trying to figure out why.

"So after all the drama, I went and bought him a mug that says, "Gay, And Groovy!"

So _that's_ where it came from.

A splinter of something starts to prickle your consciousness, catching you unawares. It's unfamiliar, this feeling – something close to envy. Jack has apparently not told you quite a few things that have been happening in his life. A few significant things. He's your brother. And according to reputable scientific studies, twins are connected by psychic bonds as well. Yet you don't have these daily encounters or nuanced moments with him. You are not privy to the mundane knowledge of every single instant spent in constant company. You haven't been for almost two years and even now, you rarely see him, though he lives just over the river in the same city. So many ways to keep your distance and you have utilized them all.

When you went away, you transposed your presence elsewhere to create a context and lifestyle indubitably your own. But you also left an absence someplace else.

Jen's cell phone rings and after glancing at the Caller ID, she lets out a short laugh.

"It's Jack, " she says. "Of course. He of the always impeccable timing." Putting the phone to her ear, she asks, chuckling, "Were your ears burning?"

You observe the breezy chattiness, listen to this end of a practiced two-sided witty repartee, and sense a connection deeper than platonic, closer than just friends. _The biggest reason that was keeping me here was the thought that if I left, you wouldn't have a sister around. But then I realized that you _**_would_** And Jen _was_ his sister in almost every way. You squelch it fast, this envy, because _This Is Jen_. You love Jen. And she loves Jack. And you love him too. Though once, you loved another brother more. You shared a connection like that with Brown. Then he was gone. When Brown died, you had Jack. When you went away, Jack had Jen.

Every absence is always filled by someone else.

"Jack's at the apartment. He says to tell Pacey to drive you straight to the train station instead later," Jen is telling you. "He got out early because one of his classes got cancelled, so he's booked an earlier train."

"But my luggage-"

"And he'll bring your luggage along with him to the station-"

"My jaffa cakes-"

"And your jaffa cakes, what's left of them."

"I'm gonna kill him."

"He says you can kill him on the train. Just make sure to get there on time. 4:45pm. Sharp."

Jen grins as she hangs up the phone and you feel a mixture of affection and jealousy at how easily she channeled Jack this moment. Oh, you know you're being silly because people are not so easily replaceable. _You_ have not been so easily replaceable, right? Everyone was grappling here in Boston, yearning to become other beings while simultaneously living out the roles they had created long ago.

Everyone, including you.

The connections between you all are so fragile, requiring consistent care and vigilant tending. You all have roles to play in each other's lives, even if they are ever-changing. You think about how each of your Capeside friends try to maneuver, shift into new personas. You sensed this with Dawson. You feel this with Jen. You _know_ it with Jack. Yet these shifts are difficult when the environment remains the same, transplanted whole from what came before, keeping a stolid past rigid, despite its growing irrelevance. Cracks have started to show. Eventually, the breaking will begin.

_It's really inexcusable. When I first met you, I didn't know much about love. Or friendship. And each of you taught me a lot about both. So maybe by my leaving I can return the favor. Because the thought of it ending like this...the way things are right now... It's just... It's not how I want to remember us. Do you?_

That was then; this is now. You decide that not everything that falls apart needs to be put back together so soon.

The new departure deadline hurries you and Jen through a second slice of pizza each and then you're packing up, paying that bill, and bundling back into Grams' Volvo. You'll be early, but that's okay. You know Joey will be early too, so you'll actually be right on time. As you drive by all the ubiquitous construction associated with the Big Dig, Jen turns thoughtful and shares her meditations aloud.

"I know it's for the better, but there's something about tearing down that old expressway that's kinda poignant. Did you know it was named after John F. Fitzgerald, JFK's maternal grandfather? They called him "Honey Fitz" and he was the former mayor of Boston."

"They called it The Green Monster," you comment casually, recalling that fact from anecdotes plucked out of familial memory. Your dad shared several tales about it with you and Jack, mostly unfavorable. _"I was in a traffic jam that lasted eleven hours one day. And that is _**_not_**_ an exaggeration! The accident rate on that goddamned thing is four times the national average for urban interstates!"_

Tearing down the old to make way for the new sometimes takes forever. But you have to start somewhere. Especially if it will make things better in the end. Because sometimes history hinders rather than helps.

When Jen drops you off at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, you enter and pay the five-dollar college student fee, wishing not for the first time that your name was Isabella so you can take advantage of the _Isabellas…Free Forever_ program. Then you make your way toward that most famous and distinctive work of art -- Titian's _Europa_. It's a breath-taking artistic rendition of a passionate mystical love tale – the god Zeus coming down in the form of a bull to seduce the mortal princess, Europa. Amused, you speculate about whether Zeus bothered to turn back into his dazzling godly form before paying court to the princess or if he offered his attentions as that rather intimidating beast. You don't even want to think about how that choice would impact any eventual intimate consummations.

As you stride through the building, you note that, for the most part, it has stayed the same for decades. Yet it is not static – evolutions and renovations, revisions and new imaginations cycle through this space, keeping energies rejuvenated and the atmosphere fresh. It was a mansion once, belonging to its quirky and generous namesake and founder, and its three stories house a myriad of galleries with arts collections spanning three centuries. They surround a garden courtyard, thriving with blooming life in every season.

You reach your endpoint and there is _Europa_, in all of her splendid glory. And there, also, is the girl you've come to meet. That tall brunette turns around and you are face-to face with your one-time-ally, sometime-adversary. As you walk toward her, she smiles.

You smile in return.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hey you," Joey says, that broken smile fixed straight as she greets you with a hug and then a shrug.

"Hey yourself," you reply, giving her a friendly squeeze, chuckling soft when you part. She always shrugs after she hugs you, almost an apology. It's this unconscious thing she does, only with you. Only every time after she returned from that certain summer at sea.

"You're early," she comments, moving off, grasping your forearm sleeve, leading you back to a spot directly in front of _Europa_. Letting go, she focuses on the piece of art before her. "I love this painting."

"Jack reserved an earlier train, so my timeline's shifted," you explain as your eyes quickly take in the subtle changes in her appearance since high school.

It's the first time you've actually seen Joey in a very long while. She is more slender, which makes her seem even taller, and is wrapped in a salmon-colored wool trench-coat that is cut well and hangs perfect upon her slight frame. You always envied her long-limbed graceful height, just a bit, having been compact cute and on the shorter side of two yardsticks all of your life. Her chestnut-dark hair is lighter, an experiment with some red-orange dye that is not entirely unsuccessful, though her roots need a touch-up. It falls in waves about her shoulders, and when it catches the light, it gleams burnished bright copper. She looks good. College life definitely agrees with her.

Glancing up at the famous canvas at front, you say, "Yup, Titian did some amazing work here. This portrait is so vivid and alive."

"Yes, it is," Joey concurs, a small quirk lifting the corner of her mouth. She points to beneath the massive frame, at a piece of shimmering green silk fabric placed there. "That's a piece of one of Isabella Gardner's favorite gowns. Designed by the famous Charles Fredrick Worth, no less. And look there," she adds, shifting direction, drawing your attention to a putto lying on its side. "That's placed there as if it's fallen straight out of the painting."

You smile at the playful intent of Isabella's placement, that little winged cherub tipped there, solitary, outside the confines of the framed world above where his painted brethren hovered. Art often lifts up a random scene or moment, elucidates it in solid form -- a vase, a sculpture, a piece of furniture, a painting, a sketch. Each was a relic that could so easily become archaic. Yet Isabella kept them relevant in this building. Kept herself relevant too. Isabella had wanted to _matter_.

"She lived in this museum, didn't she?" you ask, recalling this information volunteered by Jack during your last phone chat, along with other nonsensical tidbits, such as the fact that he hated song remakes. Except for that classic Run DMC and Aerosmith remake of _Walk This Way_ that actually improved upon the original. Oh, and Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey redoing _Endless Love_ "was pretty cool too." But Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey resurrecting _Take My Breath Away_ from the Top Gun movie soundtrack? He really could have done without that one.

"Yup. On the 4th floor. Some of her apartment's been preserved, so we can go up and look at it later, if you want." You nod your assent and Joey continues, "You know what I love about this museum? It's like it's someone's home. Full of great art from all over the world."

More of Jack's impromptu telephone arts lecture hits you. Isabella Gardner's personality was inserted, in fitful bits, all over this building. She slotted personal signature pieces amongst the artistic creations other people made, freezing scattered instants, illuminating those across centuries, hers across a lifetime. You think about the strange audacity of a woman living in a museum, amidst artifacts and relics from so many layered times of yore. Yet this place does not feel like a mausoleum, but lived in -- a house of fables and anecdotes still thriving.

"So how are you, Miss Potter?" you ask, turning to face Joey fully, your tone brisk but playful.

"Fine, thank you, Miss McPhee," she responds in kind, laughter lurking beneath. "So shall we do a little catching up now and then do more catching up later when Pacey gets here?"

"That's a good plan," you concur. Once Pacey gets here, certain topics may fall by the wayside. Joey turns and leads the way toward a bustling walkway, where conversation will not seem so intrusive. "What do you want to know?"

"Classes going well?"

You run through your first semester schedule at Harvard. How the extra hours in lab have been grueling. That all of your time on the Internet is usually given over to research for your pre-med courses. You barely have a moment to do cyber-space niceties on e-mail these days (then you apologize right then and there for not responding to the one or two messages she has sent you since school started). You talk of experiments and postulations and projections of theories. These things that would have seemed out-of-place with Jen are perfect to discuss with Joey. 

Joey starts cataloguing her Worthington travails. English literature courses she's enrolled in for the semester, several of which are upper-class seminars that she's been able to add by special permission, her contributions to Professor Wilder's prestigious literary research project last year, a distinguished recommendation. Ornery Professor Hetson who's singled her out in the classroom, often to her detriment, on more than one occasion. His mouthy daughter, Harley, that she met last Halloween, who reminds her a little of herself ("Daddy issues. Too smart for her own good. Occasionally slouches into bitter.")

She does not mention that one-time tryst with Dawson at the beginning of the year. Though classes and schoolwork will always be the most dependable common denominator between you (the only two in your group who understood the urgency and significance of pristine schoolwork and lofty grades), intimate debriefings have never been a shared strong suit. So you do not bring it up. She probably knows that you know and will leave it at that, as she has always done.

"Then of course, there's Eddie. He used to be the bartender at Hell's Kitchen, the bar across the street from Jack's apartment? He gets under my skin a lot. But I guess I do the same to him. At least that's what he tells me."

"So what's up with this new guy?" you ask, interest piqued, wanting to know about this boy outside your known circle of friends. The one who seems to have captured Miss Potter's previously stalwart Capeside-bound heart. "Jen says he's dreamy."

"She does?" Joey asks, perking up. "Well, he _is_ pretty cute. We've been dating for a few weeks now."

It sounds like Eddie's a puzzle she's eager to work at and figure out. She explains that Eddie's father had worked as janitorial staff in every main public building in Worcester and Boston – convention halls, stadiums, arenas, and theaters. Apparently, though he was the steady sort during Eddie's childhood, something happened to create a recent rupture in their relationship. But he was struggling with a permanent, soon to be debilitating, health condition, so he and Eddie were affecting a slow but steady reconciliation. Joey wasn't sure what the original story was, the tale that clarified what the initial estrangement was. She's okay with not knowing, for now. You see that Joey Potter's still a sucker for those boys with Daddy issues. Except for Dawson, they all seem to have had them, in some form or another, certainly Pacey, even Jack. And when Dawson had Daddy issues, after his father's death, he turned to Jen instead.

Joey says Eddie is punchy, irritable, a closed-off enigma. He was not a student at Worthington, as she had originally thought, but much older. Twenty-five. He had only gone to college for a semester and never finished, but she thinks he has so much potential! You feel a wistful tug at your heart, remembering a boy of your own that had such potential, that you poured so much of your energy and love into helping to develop, evolve, even burnish. He actually turned out magnificently, without your constant assistance. So you can understand Joey's zeal to help this Eddie guy out. Though in the end, it won't matter at all. _She_ won't matter, nor should she. In the end, it will all be up to him.

"He doesn't really know much about me except the basics. At first he thought I was some rich girl slummin' it – can you imagine?"

"Why didn't you correct him?"

"I dunno. I kinda liked being that different girl for a little while."

"Even though it wasn't you?"

"Even though."

They've had some sweet romantic incidents since, she hastens to add. Their first kiss, Joey initiated late at night while closing up the bar. The second kiss was prompted by Eddie at a haunted house exhibition, soothing her skittishness away. And the third kiss, something mutual, they exchanged while sitting on a window-bench out in her darkened dormitory hallway. They've shared bantering exchanges, root beer floats, a first date high up in the rafters at the No Doubt concert, and several exploratory "hanging outs" since then. She doesn't know what's going on with them, and he doesn't either, but they agree they kind of like it that way.

"You know what he said to me that night of the concert? We were sitting there, looking down on the stage, the sound of the crowd and music all around us, and he told me, 'Things have to happen to you at the exact right time in your life, or they're meaningless.' Then he took my hand into his. And things felt far from meaningless."

A flicker shimmers in her eyes and it's a gleam you recognize well. She's quite enamored of this boy, this Eddie.

"Does he make you do things you never thought you'd ever do?" you ask, thinking back to Roberto from Milan, the man who loved you after sweetly impulsive Guiliano.

Roberto helped you keep your second winter warm, all the way into a lukewarm spring. Confident, gentle, kind, and much older than you, he taught you to capture long moments for yourself. To just breathe. To savor random instants. To become very still and thus, more aware. He was the one who showed you how to slow down. He brought you to museums and art galleries, took you to fine restaurants and quaint cafes. Though Jack is more of the arts-enthusiast, the arts have become more fascinating to you since Roberto. The things you share with someone else, some Boy-else, you absorb into yourself, transform them, make them singular to you. That's how you move on.

"Eddie and I have shared our obligatory 'growing up with issues' stories," Joey tells you now, picking up the pace as you move through the various galleries. "I think we're approaching a whole new level in our relationship. We've even had our first argument. About Audrey."

Audrey was apparently obnoxious to Eddie during one of her drunken Hell's Belles gigs, and Eddie harshly called Joey out for enabling her behavior that night.

"I told him, 'I'm not her keeper,'" Joey says, an insistent tone infusing her recollection. "And he told me, 'It's worse, actually. You're her friend.'" She pauses, remembering, and then winces. "I took care of Audrey that night in the bathroom at the bar. It was very unpleasant. Audrey's extremely unhappy these days."

You're not sure if you should insert your earlier encounter with Audrey into this particular conversation. There's something going on that's way beyond you. And it wasn't like Audrey was any more pleasant to you back at Jack's apartment this morning. But you _are_ studying to be a doctor someday, so you can't resist a little prescriptive advice, even though that's not quite your intended arena of practice. You want to be Dr. Green from _ER_, not Dr. Phil from _Oprah_.

"She sounds like she might need professional help. That much drinking and acting out often masks something more deep-seated."

"Perhaps," Joey agrees, frowning a little, "Though I hope not. I'm hoping it's just a really dark phase that we can all help her through. We've only just begun to sort of talk again. You know, she didn't even tell me she and Pacey broke up until _weeks_ after the fact. And we're _roommates_! You'd think she would've told me something as important as that!"

She grows quiet all of a sudden and an erstwhile awkwardness inserts itself. You stay silent as the two of you wind through more exhibits and past numerous paintings. Way back when, you and Jack would go over to the Potter house, pre-B&B, and you and Joey became study-partners. While your respective boyfriends, Pacey and Jack, bemoaned every insistent academic exercise, preferring to play video games and watch sports on television, you and she drilled chemistry elements, math equations, historical facts and the rules of grammar into each other's heads. Evenly-matched over-achievers, you each were driven to succeed and excel. Equally competitive, you brought out the best in each other, pushing the other to be even better, yet remained respectful and supportive.

You ran for class office together. She would have been the Vice President to your President if Abby Morgan had not sabotaged your efforts, starting you off on a downward spiral. On the day you left Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital, Joey helped you pack your bags and allayed a tense ride back to Capeside in that sheriff's jeep, bickering with Pacey the entire way to keep the focus off of you, throwing surreptitious glances and reassuring smiles at you via the rear-view mirror whenever Pacey wasn't looking. Later, when you and Pacey were broken up, Joey was the one you would call, sobbing, asking her to pick you up at Rob's party. She held your hand, smoothed another over your back, snapped at Pacey because she was scared for you. She was the one who sent him to you after that fateful revelation at the pep rally, got him to go to that dock to forgive you in the first place. And he did so. But he would not forget.

That's why it hurt so much when Joey turned around and killed you. By accident. It was like being fished out of the deep waters, and then getting knocked back in, inadvertent, when the sharks gathered. But she was never the shark. And neither was he. Things happen and then it is done. _They_ happened and all else became moot. Oh, you hated her for awhile, constantly flashing back to that moment at the Capeside Library, as she looked up information about Watergate on the computer monitor, when you stood behind her pouring your heart out.

_He's... He's not Pacey. Ohh! Pathetic. I know. I know. And I thought I was over him. I really, really did. But then I bumped into him a little while ago, and...I mean, technically we're friends, right? And that's how I played it. But then it's, like, when I saw him, every irritating/adorable thing he ever did flashed before my eyes, and... I mean, that's the true test, right? When you just bump into somebody... And if you're not over him, then boom! Floodgates._

You hated her for not saying a word. But you hated yourself more. Because you had ceased to matter. That is what hurt most of all.

And yet, here you both were – two girls dumped by Pacey J. Witter, strolling companionably through this house of relic instants, soon to meet up with that very boy, hearts mended. You feel like the two of you are vestiges of a passionate aftermath, walking and breathing reminders of a storied romantic past with the same boy. You were The Girl Who Loved and Lost. You'd like to remove "and Lost" from that moniker. You do not want to remain trapped within any prior frames of being. Joey was The Girl Who Loved and Left. Even though she had not been the one who ended it, she took off running right after. So did he. But Pacey came back. You have come back, too. Has Joey even spared a glance behind her? Could she be running in circles, perpetuating a habitual cycle, and not even know it?

Here, right now, Joey has walked over to a portrait of Isabella Gardner hanging on the wall. Ten of them abound around the museum and this one is Anders Zorn's _Mrs. Gardner in Venice_, done circa 1894. She's at the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice, standing in the doorway, watching fireworks from a balcony, her arms outstretched, inviting her guests to join her. You watch as she studies the painting, a soft yearning in her gaze. In this instant, you see Joey as someone dithering right at the boundaries of all that came before, wanting to tumble outwards like that cheeky cherubic putto that Isabella Gardner placed, just so, outside and below _Europa_. She does not want to abandon any familiar environs completely, yet she longs for transformation. In that famous painting, Zeus came down from the heavens in the form of a bull to romance the fiercely-independent Europa. It was the only way to breach her defenses. What does Joey want to be – the god or the bull? Or was she Europa, awaiting the choice instead?

Joey's chewing at her lower lip, pensive. It's as if she'd like to tell you something but doesn't know if she should. Two years before, you might have peppered her with questions and insistent exhortations. Now, you just let the silence sit. More often, it's the quiet that opens a door, not a shout. But you can't help thinking as the hush continues: If you had not gone away, would that have been _you_ as well?

"I told Eddie that when he was around, my dad was very good on the encouragement part, always telling me, 'Dream big, little girl.' So he asked me what I wanted to be." Her voice is soft, but you can hear because it's so calm in this room.

"And you replied….?" you prompt, coming to stand closer, a little behind and to the side so you can see her profile.

"That I think I'm a work in progress," Joey says dryly, acknowledging the irony of that statement being uttered here in this building full of artistic works already finished, exhibited for full viewing and repeated interpretations.

"Is Eddie like any other boy you've known?" you ask, wondering.

Sometimes a girl just can't help comparing all the boys she's ever known. Each new love gets filtered through the initial lens of that First Love, the one that precedes all others. He does not preclude them, merely sets the bar for those that follow, whether high or low. Though you know Joey's known several boys since Those Two, she's only ever loved Them. You've only ever loved that One. Joey retreats, thoughtful, and you can't read her eyes. She can be hard to explicate and the years have only added layers you can't even begin to penetrate.

"He is and he isn't," she says only, shrugging, and leaves it at that, holding her meditations close, perhaps even buried. Back in high school, she was much more readily expressive. But that was before the night her heart was smashed to pieces on a dance floor, close to 365 days after the one where you got your own delicately rebuilt one splintered once more, watching those same two on a different dance floor previous.

Though you and Joey have managed to effect a casual acceptance and tacit acknowledgement of the way things turned out, the two of you still never talk of Pacey. Not really. Oh, you talk _about_ him – toss breezy sardonic anecdotes about all of his little annoyances, his sloppy habits, his rascal tendencies. But you steer clear of topics only a girl who's known him intimately could know, because you both understand that's an unspoken line you do not cross. The only time you faltered was at that rager during senior year, while you were under the influence of those pills that made your mouth tumble out unchecked baggage at the unsuspecting feet of Joey and Pacey and Drue Valentine.

_You guys are so good together! And, Joey, you are so nice! Well, except for the time when you dumped Dawson for Pacey. That was pretty cold. But, really, who can blame you? I mean, it's _**_Pacey_**_. I pretend not to care, but I have to admit, Pace, you are the love of my life, and I am so not over you! I hope it's okay that I said that. I mean, we're all really good friends, so it shouldn't be that big of a secret, right? _

Later, when you assembled everyone at that restaurant to curate your own fond farewell to sustain you before going off into the wide, wide world, she asked you about it. After you came in from the cold, where you and Pacey sat on a bench creating another warm memory for you to carry with you – one more sweet reckoning and a mutual letting go. Subsequent to Dawson orchestrating that one snapshot, the one that captured a shining instant when all things fell into place – the six of you together. 

Joey came over to you and asked, _Andie, did you mean what you said that night at the club? About Pacey?_ Before you could formulate a response, she barreled on, _Because if you did, I understand. I'm not upset. What you had with him, it was special. I know that. It always will be._ Then she pulled you into a hug and you felt an extra squeeze of sincerity. _I'm going to miss you, Andie. I really am._

Joey always seemed awed by the relationship you and Pacey had shared. Despite the longer history, the entire childhood she and he had to connect them, she always had a reverent respect for that time you had with him, when he was briefly yours. Actually, they _both_ seemed awed by it, as if it was something reverent to put up on a pedestal. Yet you would've rather kept the profane than transform into the sanctified. That year, while Pacey and Joey worked together at a thriving, messy, turbulent love between them, the notion of what you once had with him was stored, up and away, a relic easily made archaic.

Persons can become relics as well.

_He was your first, right? Yours and Joey's?_

This random recollection of Audrey's earlier inquiry, unbidden, makes you blush. After a furtive glance in Joey's direction (she's moved toward another painting nearby), you turn and pretend to study the same grand spectacle that Isabella does in the painting before you. Feigning great interest, you try to mask the remembrance of a different sort of pyrotechnics that's running through your mind, keeping the sudden high color of your face averted from others. From her.

The first time you and Pacey made love was in the backseat of his family car. Sweet and fumbling, he was gentle yet fevered. You asked him, blushing, to provide spoken guidance -- clear and specific directives. He was uncomfortable at first – his voice halting as he struggled to put into words what he wanted to do for you, heavy pauses as he framed the questions that would help you let him know what _you_ wanted done to you. As you responded to his directions – let yourself respond to his touch -- he grew more relaxed, those instructions gliding over you like caresses, that soothing voice of his with its deep, comforting timbre layering a shivering sensuality to each word, every phrase that dropped from his lips. And you came into your own, slowly but surely. Then, you _came_, period. And so did he.

Flushed and more than a little warm, you move out of this room and make your way to the outdoor garden courtyard of the museum, just within sight of where Joey is so she can see where you've gone, but far enough away so you can be alone with your ruminations. You go over to a quaint little bench to set yourself down and take a breather. The courtyard is usually full of flowers and greenery, ever-changing with each season. But it's autumn bordering on winter now, so the bright colors are muted and the foliage is less verdant than at a different time of year. The chill cuts a bit, but it's not overly harsh. Still, you gather your coat even closer around you.

Relics aren't just physical things – experiences are relics too. Every person that walked into this museum, gazed upon these gathered collections, was embraced by something larger. Those that stepped across this building's threshold became one more relic added onto an ever-evolving legacy of lifetimes. Encapsulated in this singular place, with slivers of Isabella Gardner's life eased in amidst those eras.

Immobilized in time, just for an instant.

When you were in Italy, you and your aunt watched a videotape of an old movie that your mother once taped for her from American television. It was called _The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything_. It starred Pam Dawber and Robert Hays and was about a magic gold watch that could freeze time. Its possessor would just need to click upon it and space and time turned into a motionless tableau that he or she could manipulate. One could even go back to a different moment, layer upon that past one, articles and action from the present. There was a time you would've given anything to have a magic gold watch like that one.

But really, the only layers you _can_ affix to time are those of meaning and memory.

These white marble pillars all around you recall another place -- those Ruins back in Capeside, less maintained, more on the wild side, even raw. You flashback to a conversation you had with Joey, at the end of that summer, after she sailed away with your blue-eyed boy. When they came back, he was all hers. He was actually all hers way before then, before they left, before they even started.

You bumped into her at The Ruins, one encroaching dawn. It was a Sunday. School was starting the next day and you were restless. You went there to think, to come to terms with the tumultuous springtime before this and the light-hearted summer that had unraveled since then. A fresh year and another phase of your lifetime. A new permutation to grow accustomed to.

And she was there too. She had gone on an early morning run and was leaning against one of the pillars, wistful, a small smile on her face, as if she was remembering something beautiful. Her dark eyes grew solemn and you realized that memory was also something sacred. You approached her, wary. When you called out her name, she was startled, then sheepish.

She remained quiet as you walked up to where she stood, your eyes taking her appearance in, close-up. That summer changed her. _Pacey_ changed her. You could tell at the Dive-In a recent night before, could see it in the way she dressed – letting more of her sleek, tanned body show with a backless tank top that ended just above her midriff, hovering beyond the top of her jean shorts. In the way her slender hips moved, stealthy and sensual in her stride.

Yet Pacey came back transformed as well – bronzed and healthy, his hair newly-shorn, jaunty and relaxed. That smile of his -- already bright in wattage, beautiful in radiance – shone ever brighter, intimated a deeper sense of bliss. He had always been cocky, yet there was a more resonant confidence about him. Especially around her. Around him, she glowed.

Though you both were at the Dive-In, the momentous reunion between she and Dawson took precedence over everything else. The group outdoor setting assuaged that initial encounter and you both managed to be noncommittally cordial and warm amongst your mutual friends.

But that morning at The Ruins, it was just the two of you, alone.

_Hi_, she said, almost shy.

_Hello,_ you replied, more resolute.

_How are you?_ she asked.

_Fine,_ you replied, a little too fast, much too firmly.

_I mean, really,_ she asked, her tone letting you know that her concern lay elsewhere, an unspoken allusion to your heart.

Picking up on her intention, you went straight to the core of things.

_You never love anyone like your first love,_ you tell her, echoing what you told Pacey on the lawn that night the springtime prior, after you and Will came upon him holding her hand as Dawson raged at them from the top of his front steps. You told him this after Joey dropped that same hand and ran into the Leery house to go after Dawson, following that first love, leaving her new love, lonely, watching her flight with somber, sad eyes.

_No, you don't_, Joey replied, her voice soft and pensive.

Something about the breaking dawn in that isolated place, surrounded by the whispering trees and gleaming marble columns of The Ruins, induced you to seek truth, compelled you to inquire after it. So you did.

_Do you think you'll ever love Pacey like that? Like your soul-mate?_ you asked her, invoking that sanctified moniker, only ever applied to Joey and Dawson.

Joey cracked a wry smile at your words, as if recalling something. You wondered vaguely if someone had asked her that same question before. 

_I love him more than that,_ she said.

Joey dropped her eyes, perhaps to be polite because she knew you loved him once, knew he loved you too, equally so. But in that split-second, you saw that spark. A spark that connoted a thing so great, so immense, you could see it scared her. But it lifted her up too.

_What is he to you?_ you asked her, abrupt, your tone sharp and to the point. Pacey made you happy once. You wanted him to be happy too.

But you already knew.

When you saw them strolling, hand-in-hand, along that beach at the Dive-In – before they saw Dawson, before Dawson saw them, before Capeside intruded an oppressive history onto their blissful present – you caught that shared glance between them, that electric spark that lit up all around. They were a gorgeous couple and they shared a gorgeous love. So when Joey set the word out there, her voice steady and sure, pushing it out like a proclamation steeped deep with certainty, you already knew the answer.

_Everything._

Ultimately, the things that truly matter are those great and small. That one word encompassed both.

"It's getting late. We probably should get going."

Joey is suddenly standing before you and, startled, you truncate your rather comprehensive musings, storing them away for another time when you can give them your full attention. When you get to your feet, she turns and leads you back inside, toward another area of the building.

"Pacey's gonna meet us in the Museum Café. He's sneaking away from work for this coffee break and should be here soon…"

Joey's voice trails away as she stops at the threshold entrance to that eatery. You see a glowing spark light up her hazel-brown eyes and you know even before you turn to look for yourself.

Pacey's already there.


	5. Chapter 5

A girl likes to imagine what it might be like, setting eyes on her first love once again after Time inserts space in-between. You've envisioned this moment for yourself, in less shielded instants, picture your brown eyes meeting his blue ones across a crowded room. It would be random. He would glance up from preoccupation. You would be searching then finding. Looks would link, simultaneous, a sudden current crackling a connection never broken.

One split-second collapses the stratum of years.

Pacey's wearing a suit and looks incredibly handsome. Older, polished, even elegant. His thick wavy locks, so stubborn to go a-curling, are slicked into order, tamed by a gelatinous hair product. That barely-there scruff from the end of summer has evolved into a well-groomed mustache and goatee. He's sitting alone at a small table with three chairs, a sheath of papers in his hand, wearing a focused concentration on his lean, man-boy features. Glancing up, seeing you and Joey, his blue eyes radiate, luminous. He unleashes a sexy wry grin that knocks you breathless. Joey saw him first and Pacey saw you. Then he saw her too. A slight exhale of breath escapes the girl next to you.

It was always like that.

Pacey stands while you approach and reaches out to grasp your hand, bending to kiss you in greeting. His lips against your cheek brush a warm, dry caress. Then he's on to Joey, just slightly behind. As you shift aside, you catch how he brings his other hand up to place it at her waist, bringing her close as he leans in to kiss her cheek also. With her, he does not have to bend down so far. A connective pause lingers between them after, a glance that contains an abiding affection.

This, also, was always like that.

Though he was _your_ first love, it is that second glance that lasts.

While Pacey pulls your chair out, offering the seat as a gentleman does for a lady, abrasive breath traps itself in the back of your throat. As you stifle a flash of resentment, he sinks down into his chair, tossing a smirk at Joey, still standing. She responds with a sardonic lift of her brows before seating herself, then rolls her exhibition pamphlet up into a tube and leans over to smack Pacey's arm. Laughing, he throws a beleaguered look at you as if to ensure your sympathy. He has it, as always, but you suddenly feel a little uncomfortable. Your reaction just now puzzles you and is entirely unwelcome. Bygones have been bygones for a very long time.

The usual initial niceties are swapped while you push that strange feeling far back from your mind. It is determined that Pacey has snuck away for at least two hours while supposedly on a client run. Joey will be leaving soon to get to her work shift at Hell's Kitchen. You inform Pacey to drop you straight at the train station instead, much sooner than expected. That out of the way, you each order coffee drinks (Pacey, the house blend black; Joey, a vanilla latte; yourself, a cappuccino) and get straight to conversation.

"So I didn't ask you about Italy while we were walking around earlier. What was it like, living out there this past year? Was it any different from the first? If so, how did your experiences change?" Joey inquires, unwinding her scarf and wiggling in her seat as she shrugs out of her salmon trench-coat, letting it flop over the seat back behind her.

"Would you like her to write that essay in 1000 words or less, Miss Potter, or are you looking for a full-on research paper on the subject?" Pacey teases, standing to slip off his suit jacket and sling it over the back of his seat, atop a bulkier black wool overcoat.

"Stow it, Witter. And that place where the sun don't shine ain't on a boat, neither," she cracks back.

"Very bad grammar, Jo," he admonishes, sitting back down, reaching over to assist your own outer garment divesting, "and you said 'ain't' besides."

She dismisses him with an oft-practiced roll of her eyes. You ignore the flutter of giddiness you feel at Pacey's chivalry. The boy always did get to you. Joey continues with her line of questioning, focusing on you and ignoring Pacey's giggles.

"Seriously, Andie. What was it like this time around? My inquiring mind definitely wants to know," Joey says, leaning forward on folded arms, her clear hazel gaze interested.

You sense that yearning in her again, that indefinable longing. Though she comes off as perfectly content, that girl that wanted to get out of Capeside still desires further journeying it seems. This touches something in you, the love of being elsewhere, shoving that momentary, initial pique far away. Your first time in Italy, you stayed mostly in Florence with your aunt. This next sojourn, you traveled far more extensively throughout Italy. So you tell her of all the added places you visited -- Venice, Rome, Milan. You even went to Sicily.

"Leave da gun. Take da cannoli," Pacey puts in, doing his best bad imitation of a mafia mobster from _The Godfather_.

"Stereotype!" Joey admonishes, scolding Pacey with her finger.

"No," you counter with a straight face, "the cannoli was actually pretty damned good."

They continue to drill you about Italy. Joey inquires about art and the architecture ("Which did you find more stunning at the Sistine Chapel – the ceiling inside or the actual building itself?" "Jo – that's a chicken-and-egg question if I ever heard one," Pacey comments.). Pacey asks about supermodels and food ("My latest recurring dream – Monica Belluci and Petra Nemcova sprawled out on the steps leading up to The Colosseum, eating pizza." "Sexist!" Joey proclaims. "No, pizza enthusiast – I imagine such fine sights for pizza everywhere!"). You turn the tables at one point, start asking Pacey about his Caribbean stops and sights two summers ago, exchanging quips and anecdotes with him. Joey is in stitches from your combined storytelling. Though she's heard several of Pacey's sailing stories before, no doubt, he always tells them with great animation and you add to the hilarity with your own mordant observations of foreign locales.

"I would love to travel more," she sighs, wiping a tear from her eye, her previous laughter at the last Caribbean tale inducing it. "The only time I really got to travel was that summer when Pacey and I…"

She suddenly trails off, recalling herself within space and time. The mood has been jaunty, the three of you catching up as old friends because the past year was a neutral subject, free of any prickly connotations. That inexplicable flash of envy returns as a former time intrudes, when you shared more with Pacey than simple wanderlust for far-off places, when you and Joey shared the exact same feelings for this very boy. But you never traveled anywhere with Pacey. And you and Joey have different kinds of feelings for this boy now. 

Joey sends a guilty glance at you then automatically tilts her eyes toward Pacey. They exchange a quick glance and then she drops her eyes, awkward, and Pacey drops his gaze for a second too. A strained moment descends that all of you thought was way behind, far in the past. So much has happened since then. But in this building, full of living histories, that one element of your intertwined fates emerges, unbidden yet stark. Then Pacey chuckles and continues on, his tone reassuring.

"Someday, Jo, you really need to get out to Paris on your own," he says, "That's where you _really_ want to go. It's what you've wanted all along."

Mollified then wistful, Joey says, "Paris would be divine."

Pacey once told you that Joey had an opportunity to go to Paris, back in high school. If she had gone, she wouldn't have been around that semester you and Jack transferred to Capeside High. And there wouldn't have been a Dawson and Joey that year. Nor a Jack and Joey, for that matter. But you'd like to think there still would've been you and Pacey. She stayed, and all of those things came to be. Then she and Pacey came to be, the very next year and the one right after.

Some people cling to ideals and transfer all of their longing onto a person or a place, instead of a thing. You think Dawson did, believing hard in his soul-mate. Perhaps Joey does too, with Paris? But Pacey never did. And neither do you, anymore. Things don't have to be concrete. Things can be ineffable -- a dynamic, a sensibility, a connection. Its indistinct nature requires constant redefinition, a focused reworking from time to time. Always open for revisiting. Always flexible to fresh interpretations. Always present despite any enforced absence.

You recall the three of you during that sophomore year, sitting together one breezy afternoon at a picnic table in the high school courtyard, strategizing your run for student body president. He was your campaign manager and she was your running mate. _Did you get a glimpse of Chris and Abby's smear campaign? This is exactly what I was worried about,_ Joey said, settling down beside the two of you, interrupting a kiss much to Pacey's annoyance. _Why? We'll just hit them back harder. There's a whole chapter in my book on mud slinging,_ he replied, slamming down a quick reflexive hand to keep your campaign timeline from being blown away by a sudden gust of wind. _No, we are not stooping to their lows. Government is about balance and order,_ you admonished, moving on to issues for debate and an overall game-plan.

_Winning will be our best revenge,_ you pronounced, believing in balance and order because at that moment in time, you had everything you needed and planned to have it forever.

_She won my vote a few bumper stickers ago,_ an admiring Pacey told a scowling Joey. Then she threw a sassy retort back at him and they bickered, sparking yet another amidst a long line of battles.

While they tussled, you drew up all of your charts and slogans and strategies. Only now do you realize that even the best-laid plans sometimes don't amount to much.

In this Museum Café, you three are sitting together again, divulging and bantering, but Joey's gaze always remains on Pacey just a beat longer than necessary. She slings easy smiles, and beneath, a ready laughter. Her hands linger wherever they alight – on his shoulder, at his back, on his arm. And Pacey's eyes gleam bluer, the timbre of his voice is lower, more intimate. His body leans close to Joey's and he bends forward while addressing her, sometimes reaching out to push at her head, playful. That thing is still there, regardless of their best intentions, and you see it, plain as day.

That spark.

It crackles there between them, despite their stubborn determination to keep things ruthlessly platonic. The two of them are like magnets irrevocably fixed, straining separate but equally compelled towards each other. A relationship borne and bred on extremes – love and hate, ally and adversary, friends and enemies -- yet that was the essence of Them.

All things contrary, wrapped up and completely intrinsic to one another.

Joey's cell phone rings and when she answers, her "Hi!" is breathy and her smile is bright. She excuses herself and scurries out to the walkway beyond the Café.

"Must be that Eddie Guy, huh?" you comment, noticing the way Pacey's eyes follow her, a touch of wistful traced upon a non-committal expression.

Pacey lets out a short laugh, bringing that blue gaze back to you. "That Eddie Guy? I like that, McPhee. Short. Pithy."

"Or," you continue, teasing, "you could just call him Eddie."

"That Eddie Guy works for me," he concurs, chuckling. But then he grows serious again. "Andie, are you okay?"

_How are you_, Joey had asked, amidst the swaying trees and those gleaming marble columns of the Ruins, the autumn after that summer she sailed away with the love of your life. Pacey's inquiry is delivered in much the same way as that one had been. Wrought with concern for those things unspoken, perhaps buried deep within your heart. Those things you do not expose readily. But this was Pacey. Those armors are never present around him, despite your best efforts to keep them so. You stopped trying, long ago.

"That was weird," you say, alone with him now, Joey swallowed up by the bustling crowd of museum-goers just beyond. "_I_ felt weird," you clarify, "But I don't know why."

Pacey reaches across the table to take your hand in his and squeezes it. 

"We're okay, right?" he asks, keeping his eyes steady on yours.

"Yes, of course," you reply. Then, you add, "But I'd really like to fall in love again someday."

Pacey grins, understanding gleaming there, along with a touch of sadness as well.

"So would I," he says.

And that's all you have to say to each other. That's all that needs to be said.

He releases your hand and glances down at his watch. "Jack needs you there, when?"

"By 4:45."

Joey returns, all a-bustle. Grabbing up her coat, she hastily thrusts her arms through the sleeves, tosses her scarf onto her neck, wrapping it quickly.

"I have to go," she says, apologetic. "Eddie says Hell's Kitchen is busier than usual and one of the other waitresses just called in sick."

"We'll walk you out," Pacey states, getting to his feet and putting his suit jacket back on. "I need to get Andie to the train station anyway." Then he stops, looking at you, a question quirking his brow. "Unless you'd like to walk around a little bit longer?"

"No, that's fine. Better early than late," you say, standing to gather up your own things. You've found this museum visit illuminating, but you do have places you need to go. The rest of these housed legacies will have to wait for another revisiting, another time. So you shake off any recalcitrant thoughts along with your coat before re-armoring yourself against the certain cold outside. "Especially if _you're_ driving me."

"With Pacey driving, you probably should've left half an hour ago," Joey cracks on a half-smile.

"Potter, don't even get me started on _your_ driving," Pacey retorts, rolling up his sheath of papers and sticking them into his coat pocket.

"It took forever for me to learn! Not that you weren't a good teacher," she tells Pacey. "You were very patient with me."

"Well, once you relaxed and quit over-thinking, you were fine. When you just went with the flow and concentrated on staying put, instead of racing to get to the next downshift, you did great," he responds.

"Yeah," Joey says. "That _was_ great."

Pacey's looking down at his hands as he pulls on a pair of black mittens, walking just slightly ahead because of his long-legged gait. You see a small smile yanking at the edge of his mouth. Joey strolls in-between and you notice that her gaze is fixed on him. And this time, it's _her_ expression that bears a trace of wistful.


	6. Chapter 6

So many stories abound in Boston. A tale affixes to every distinguished building, to each highlighted place on a map, offering up reminders of a gloried past, keeping current folks accountable to those roots. At the train station, Pacey pulls up close to one of the entrances where circular neon tubes hang above. Those giant rings are misleadingly modern. Although Back Bay Station is a contemporary construction, inside, the building evokes a different historical time; something new, borrowing something old.

None of Boston's landmarks are incidental. Boasting a spacious hall distinguished by massive wooden arches, it calls to mind a cathedral, secular in nature. With its expansive concourse bathed by natural light during the day and glowing illumination at night, this homage to an old-style train station radiates outward through large glass façades, proclaiming its presence as a significant anchor to Boston's local and regional transportation needs. Meanwhile, a plethora of journeys embark, depart, and criss-cross within, daily.

Down the way is Downtown Crossing Station where you started this day with the first of your Capeside-in-Boston encounters. Was it really just that morning when you ascended from a subterranean underground into wavering sunlight and crisp, cold air, straight into the arms of an old friend? Each visit since then has flowed into the other, this last one merging two into one.

Across the street, the Copley Plaza Hotel stands grand, the setting where scenes from _Next Stop Wonderland_ were filmed, as Dawson informed you. The plaza also boasts some fine shopping, and if you had more time, you might have crossed the road to do a little browsing at the plethora of stores retailing there. But a light rain has started falling, so you and Pacey sit together in his red vintage Mustang. A few minutes prior, Jack called on your cell phone, told you to sit tight. He's running late but will be right there via the T.

"So how do you know so much about my love life in Italy?" you ask, amused.

Pacey's just finished teasing you about your last fling, a brief one you had before returning Stateside.

"Jack talks in his sleep."

"And how often, pray tell, do you sleep next to Jack?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know," Pacey chuckles. "By the way, I think he had more than just a passing interest in that last one. Guido, wasn't it?"

"Gerardo," you correct, sending him a mock-stern stare.

Gerardo was an intense, passionate, live-only-for-the-moment apprentice portrait-maker. During several weeks the previous summer, you and he engaged in a crazy, short-lived, but tempestuous love affair. At the end of it, he presented you with a tiny miniature portrait, much like the ones that were produced en masse during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for noblewomen. It captured your personality in Italy – smiling, sensual…set free. Gerardo believed that portraits throughout a person's lifetime establish an atlas to one's soul, connecting significance, charting evolution. You keep that miniature on your dorm desk at Harvard, to remind you of who you have Become. So that you do not slip back into Used To Be.

"He was half-French, by the way," you point out to Pacey.

"So adding that 'o' at the end of his name made the other half of him Italian?"

"The things that made him French and those that made him Italian are subjects I don't care to discuss with an ex-boyfriend."

"Well, well, well," Pacey drawls, "That's an ex of _yours_ I would've liked to meet. Maybe he'd have some suggestions to round out my current repertoire."

"I'm pretty sure your repertoire is varied enough already," you counter dryly. "And speaking of exes, I met Audrey this morning."

Before any filters kept the thought from slipping out into spoken, you pushed the sentence out because you're interested in his reaction. You can't help it -- you want to see what kind of feelings he may still harbor for her. It might be unfair, gauging Audrey based on one faulty impression, but there it is. Pacey grows still and his loose fist resting on the steering wheel unfurls into open. You watch his fingers as they flex and close. He watches them too.

"She drop off the apartment keys?"

"Yes. I have them with me." Bending down, you retrieve your purse from the floor. Groping through sundry things, you find the keys and hand them over. "She didn't seem to be doing so well."

Pacey's gone quiet, rummaging through a number of thoughts that you cannot read off a suddenly shuttered expression. He obviously cared – deeply – and you regret that you brought her up so intently. You've seen so many sides of this boy, all the things _he_ Used To Be. But you were curious to learn about the man he has Become. And who he's loved during that in-between time.

"She broke up with me at a Halloween party," Pacey says, his quiet voice carrying, filling the silence with sound. "It was this big rager that Dawson's people threw on their movie set. The place was so huge, we didn't see him at all the entire night." He shifts in his seat to face you, his eyes a clouded gray-blue, reflecting the skies up above. "That very same night, I told Emma I didn't think I ever loved Audrey. By the end of the night, we were through. It's almost as if the moment I thought the thought, it happened. It was over."

He's talking about Audrey, but you sense he means something else entirely, a strange assumption that ties to an earlier ending. In that one, he thought he wasn't good enough, and thinking it meant he really wasn't. That's the unfinished thought that hovers. Even though _he_ was the one who ended it before.

"That doesn't mean anything," you say, reaching over to squeeze his wrist, reassuring. "Things are over when they need to be. That's just the way it goes."

It's a hackneyed truism but factual, nonetheless. You're a veteran of downward spirals, of thinking the worst of your intentions, of self-flagellating in the aftermath of heartbreak. It's ironic you're telling this to the boy who brought you to that lowest point in the first place. But karma revolves, coming back around. And it is not always cruel.

"When I passed my Series 7 Exam the very next week, my boss, Rich, took all of us guys down to New Orleans to celebrate. All expenses paid."

"That sounds fun."

"You'd think so, right?" Pacey asks, looking at you, exasperated. "But all I did was obsess over the fact that once again, I failed in a relationship." As you open your mouth to automatically contradict his words, he waves away your intended protest. "I know, I know – it takes two to make something work – or not work. And I really didn't intend to go down this road of self-pity with you. But I haven't been able to talk to anyone about this. Jack and Jen are real tight with Audrey. And Joey…well, she's otherwise occupied."

A sad wistfulness emerges again – a merest glimpse that reveals itself before skittering away. You realize Pacey is letting himself hang out there, vulnerabilities exposed. As much as you could not hold up any armors with him, so he always told you things he did not tell anyone else. If you could paint his portrait, you'd want to paint him now -- thoughtful, somber, enigmatic, and grown.

Sighing, Pacey leans back, lying against the headrest, tired.

"Rich made things worse by hiring me a hooker for the night."

"You slept with a hooker to get over Audrey?"

Though you manage to keep your mouth from dropping open, your eyes go very wide.

"No." He shakes his head, adding, "I found out before we did the actual deed and left the room. I found Rich. We had words. Then I punched him. Which probably should've gotten me fired."

"I'm surprised it didn't. Not that I wanted you to be," you put in hastily.

"Rich charged her services to a business account under 'guest expenses.' If he raised a stink about it, I would've too," he explains. "We decided to let whatever happened in New Orleans, stay in New Orleans."

"Nice job you got there."

"Funny thing is, I'm _good_ at it, Andie," Pacey says, half-apologetic and half-defensive. "What does that say about _me_?"

His gaze is intense, but his manner, fragile, recalling another car in the rain during high school. A blue-eyed boy with a piece of paper clutched in his trembling hand, handing his first "A" over to you, along with his heart. _How about I start at the truth?_ he asked that afternoon, pushing past your hurt to lay bare his deepest fear. It was a fear you shared too. But this is a different fear that has nothing to do with you two. This is all about _him_. So you reach over to take his hand between the both of yours, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"It says you are a hard-working, intelligent young man, learning the ways of the business world and moving as well as he can through its twisty-turny mazes," you tell him, looking straight into his serious blue eyes, speaking with a confidence born from belief and a small measure of faith. "You're the best of the best, Pace. You always were."

"There you go again, McPhee. Your overwhelming optimism--"

"--and my ardent belief that everything in the world is wonderful until proven crap?" you interrupt, finishing his statement. "Well, you _are_ wonderful, Pace. And _you're_ the only one trying to prove you're crap."

"I _feel_ like crap," Pacey mutters on a melancholy chuckle.

"That will pass," you tell him, once again invoking someone else's advice.

Irony layers the context with a bemused sheen. Joey told you that, then you told Audrey, and now you're telling Pacey. The sentiment has gone through its own version of the game _Telephone_ throughout this day, staying true in its statement yet shifting by situation. You lean against Pacey and rest your head on his shoulder.

"You called me 'stalwart' that night too. I still hate that word."

"And yet, it still applies to you," he finishes, smiling.

Looking down at his hand between yours, Pacey turns it over, capturing your top hand with his, intertwining fingers. His palm is warm and rough, those fingers mingling with yours, strong and sure. It's been a long time since you've held hands like this with him.

Memories sneak in, surreptitious, filling a quiet void.

A high school hallway between classes and a sarcastic boy with frosted white-gold tips. A personal welcoming committee on your very first day.

A Capeside grocery store, while your mother loses her sanity in Aisle 2. That boy asking her to make him a sandwich, guiding her home.

The waterfront after a disappointing Homecoming. The two of you sharing a dance, then a first kiss under the stars.

A tiny bathroom filled with shattered mirror fragments. His voice desperate, on the verge of tears, pleading, _for the love of God, come out here and choose me. Please..._

An empty pier filled with soft music. This boy holding you close for one last dance, promising to never say goodbye.

But he _did_ say goodbye. So you did too.

Yet in a hospital after a raging dance party, when you almost died, he stayed because he was glad you were alive.

The very next week, lounging on your bed, your make-up homework in piles all around him, he told you, _Maybe we're meant to just spend a certain part of our lives with certain people and then move on_. You replied, _Pacey, we can move on without moving away from each other,_ wishing for forgiveness and reconciliation amongst a group of suddenly estranged friends.

Then he turned the tables when you balked at your chance to break free, asking him to be the tiebreaker in a momentous decision. _You spend way too much time worryin' about everybody else. We all do. But at the end of the day, it's _**_your_**_ life. It's not your dad's, it's not Jack's, it's not mine. It's yours, and _**_you_**_ get to live it. So _**_you're_**_ the tiebreaker, Andie._

On a bench under the stars by Leery's Fresh Fish, you told him he was your strength and he christened you 'brave' and sometimes 'stalwart'. At a beach outside a graduation party when you said leaving Capeside wasn't an end, but a beginning, he told you, and only you, that he finally achieved something for himself -- a high school degree and a job offer to sail the Caribbean.

When you asked why he told you these things, at the exclusion of the others, especially that tall doe-eyed girl who you knew he still loved, he said, _You were the first person in my life who ever told me that I could be more than I was and believed it. So I guess that's thank you._ All you could reply was, _You're welcome._

That miniature portrait back in your room at Harvard may have been painted by your latest love, but it was your first love that set the contours of that eventual depiction. A painter merely encapsulates a moment, an essence of representation. But the substance of a life comes from within, weighed by preceding years on scales of burgeoning memory.

"I guess this is another 'thank you'," Pacey murmurs, stealing one of your thoughts without spending a penny.

"Well 'you're welcome' right back at ya," you reply, turning your face into his shoulder and squeezing his hand. He squeezes right back and drops his cheek against your head.

Your cell phone rings, the melodious tones of Aaron Copland's _Fanfare for the Common Man_ seeming very loud, after such a still calm. Pacey disentangles his hand from yours so you can sit up and fish the phone out of your purse. When you do, Jack's voice crackles into your ear.

"Hey, where are you?"

"Just outside the station," you tell him. "Where are _you_?"

"Just inside it," he replies. "I'm at the usual place. And I've got all of your stuff."

"Okay. I'll be right in." Snapping the phone shut, you turn to face Pacey. "Jack's waiting for me inside, so I guess this is goodbye."

You lean over to kiss him, aiming for his cheek just above where that scruff of a wannabe beard begins ("It's a goatee! A beard, junior," he told you earlier). Simultaneous, Pacey turns his face just so and your lips brush the corner of his mouth instead, absorbing a little of the delicious heat beyond in that innocuous brushing. When you pull back, his face hovers there in front of yours, poised. Bemused, you glance down at those lips, lingering, then back up into his blue eyes, turned murky. A quicksilver flicker lurks then disappears. You feel the pull of a latent attraction tugging. But Pacey brings his hand up to cup your face, leaning his forehead in to briefly touch yours. Then he pulls back, offering you a smile that's slightly pained, yet pacifying.

"Catch ya on the next round, McPhee?"

You smile, understanding.

"You bet, Witter."

Sliding that smile into a cheeky grin, Pacey chuckles as you exit the car and waves jauntily before pulling away from the curb. It's stopped raining, so you walk to the station entrance, unmolested by wetness. It's a funny thing about mended hearts -- on the other side of broken awaits a brave new world. You can never go back to that moment when you lost him as your love and change it. Yet still you both carry complete and unconditional conviction in each other, remaining the closest of friends.

What you two share may not be "true love," but it _is_ a love that's true.

Once inside the station, you make your way to where Jack awaits in front of the huge bronze statue of A. Philip Randolph in the Amtrak waiting room. Visitor pamphlets inform tourists that Randolph organized the first African-American labor union – the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – in 1925. As their President, he led the struggle for a collective bargaining agreement with the powerful Pullman Company, the first of its kind with a major American corporation. It was an action that paved the way for future gains in organized labor and civil rights. You've spent many a time waiting for Jack at this statue which honors that fight, poring over the information materials available at the mini-museum here, so this historical fact is etched into your head. But Jack precedes you on this day, so those pamphlets will go un-reread. Standing next to your suitcase, his large, overstuffed Nike duffel bag slung over one shoulder, your brother snacks on a jaffa cake, nonchalant.

"Didn't you read my note?" you ask, annoyed, after discovering that the package he hands you is only half-full.

"Like you're really gonna slay me with a smiley," Jack scoffs, licking sweet residue off his fingers. "Besides, you wouldn't dare kill me. I'm your brother. Kill me and you kill a part of yourself. Paranormal connection and all of that twins stuff."

"Great, my own worse half for the better part of eternity," you mutter, folding the package to half its size and thrusting it into your very large purse. "Why didn't you wait to snack on the train?" you ask, grabbing the handle of your suitcase to pull it behind you while starting a brisk walk toward the tracks. If you both hurry, you just might make the 5:25 Acela Express.

"Ah yes! Amtrak's culinary delights," he concurs, easily falling into step beside you. "They _do_ have those new super-duper 'special' sandwiches. And the microwave pizza is always good."

"Such the jokester, Mr. Jackster," you intone, wry, tossing an old childhood nickname at him.

Jack grins, a tiny smear of chocolate on his chin, orangey bits between his teeth. This flips you back to a kitchen counter in Providence when you both were six and your mother was baking her usual apple pie for Thanksgiving. Your hands, covered in flour, and Jack's face, smeared with apple filling, while nine-year old Tim laughed at both of you. _Look at Mr. Jackster!_ he said, pointing. The two of you smeared him with sticky chocolate cake mix and you christened him Brown. Your mother chuckled at the spirited shenanigans as she carried an immaculate pie over to the oven, ready for baking. A random recollection, it's a perfect moment, suspended in time. Tiny instants of perfection are arbitrary like that – throwaway happenstances that linger forever, becoming perfect in hindsight.

A last call announcement for the train sputters over the PA system and the conductor is waving you over to the last open door. Jack sprints ahead and leaps into the car, tosses his duffel onto the downstairs luggage rack, and holds his hands out for you to give him your luggage, so he can toss it next to his. Climbing up the stairs to the second level seating compartment, you seek out seats that book-end a table so you can have one side to stretch out and Jack can elongate himself on the other. Luckily, one is available, and you both settle in comfortably for the short, thirty minute ride to Providence.

"Hey, did you know that the dude that Smoot Bridge is named after is still alive? And works at the American National Standards Institute?"

"That's _Harvard_ Bridge, Jack, and quit making stuff up."

Harvard Bridge crosses the Charles River, connecting Cambridge to Boston, but is known by locals as "Smoot Bridge" because of a trenchant local legend. You know this particular tale very well, having dated an MIT upper-classman for a brief time near the end of summer, just as you were settling into your Harvard environs. Sometime in the late 1950s, some MIT fraternity pledges supposedly used one of their shortest brethren (measuring a lofty 5 feet and 7 inches) as a human yardstick to determine how long the walk across the bridge would be. _They marked every 10 Smoots with paint and ended with a total of 364.4 Smoots and one ear_, your erstwhile MIT admirer proclaimed, proud, at the end of your very first date. There weren't too many dates after that one.

"God's honest truth!" Jack insists, holding one hand up, swearing, and putting the other across his heart. "You're just crotchety because Smoot was an MIT student. You're a Harvard snob."

He might have a point there, so you change the subject, bringing up something that's been bugging you since lunchtime. "Hey Jack, why didn't you tell me about Professor Freeman?"

"What are you talking about? I've been talking about my popular culture class, non-stop."

"You never told me that Professor Freeman made a pass at you."

"It wasn't so much a pass as…a confession. Of his true inclinations."

"Yet you felt comfortable telling Jen about it and not me, your sister?" You cannot keep a tinge of umbrage from coloring your tone. Jack, of course, senses it instantly.

"This isn't a competition," he points out, logical.

"I know that, Jack, but I'm just saying-"

"Look, I knew you were stressed about this semester at Harvard, especially since you deferred your first year," he interrupts, somewhat irritated. "I didn't want to tell you anything that might distract you."

"I don't want you to feel like you can't tell me things-"

"I _don't_ feel that way," Jack intervenes once again. "But I _do_ think I can handle these things on my own. Freeman gave me a C- on a paper – unfairly so. We discussed it and he changed it to a B. He got scared, that's all, revealing so much of himself to me. Eventually, he told me I was right. Not just in class, but about a lot of things. It was sad, y'know? He was probably the most popular professor on campus, definitely the most inspirational, yet he felt he had to hide that part of himself that's real. But at least he came around in the end."

Jack sounds so confident, self-assured, at ease. Just a few years ago, he was struggling, coming to terms with his own true self. _Think about the way that you treated me and the way that you treated Tim because he was the real son and I was different,_ he seethed at your unyielding father, staunch in his refusal of seeing what was right before him, on the verge of abandoning you both, yet again. _And as hard as you've tried to stamp it out and ignore it, I have tried _**_harder_**_. I have tried harder than you to be quiet and to forget it and to not bother my family with my problems._ Then Jack walked over to the staircase, sitting down, quietly sobbing. _But I can't try anymore because it hurts. I'm sorry, Dad. Andie, I'm sorry. I don't want to be going through this, but I am_. You went over to him, sat and cried alongside, then expelled your father from the house, keeping comfort and sustenance enclosed between you two, alone.

But now Jack's the one who's stalwart. He's the one who remains steady amidst a storm of self-discovery, dispensing sage advice to conflicted men twice his age. Even your hard-line father has softened, conceding his initial, wrong-headed conclusions, initiating a changed dynamic, a less hesitant, more respectful father-son bond. Playing chess has become their new ritual, whenever they see each other. Jack called you in Italy to describe an epic match they engaged in during Thanksgiving last year. You were happy to hear the elation in his voice, signifying more than just a game well-played, but a meaningful connection newly forged.

"Okay, so why did you tell me that Pacey punched that guy at the concert because of what he did to Jen, when it was actually over Audrey?"

"It was over Audrey?" Jack asks, feigning surprise.

"Jack," you answer, slight reproach in your tone.

"Okay, fine," Jack yields, holding up a hand to stay any follow-up queries. Then he shrugs. "I dunno…sometimes you're still weird about Pacey and other women."

"That never stopped you from telling me about all of his other flings!"

"This was different," Jack counters, lounging back against the window, his legs stretched across the seat. "It wasn't a fling. I think he really cared about Audrey. I think he even loved her a little."

"He did," you concur, remembering Pacey's remorse in the car. "But I still don't understand why you'd think that would bother me."

"Doesn't it though?" Jack asks, pinning you with a telling look.

"Okay, a little," you admit. "But it's not because I still have feelings for him or anything."

"No, but you did once. And for you, that's enough."

You hate when Jack is right.

"Do you feel weird around Ethan or Tobey?" you ask him.

"Don't ever see them. But if it was David…" Jack trails off and switches gears. "Anyway, I don't want to jinx this."

"You really like David, huh?"

"Yeah," he begrudges.

"Why didn't you ask him to come home with us for Thanksgiving?"

"And expose him to the McPhee craziness so early on? No thank you. Besides, he has his own family."

"From what I know of David, he'd handle himself just fine."

"You're probably right," he agrees. "I guess I'm just not ready. It's still so new and for once in my life, so _uncomplicated_. I feel comfortable and open and relaxed around him. Then Jack adds, grinning, "And he really, really turns me on."

You laugh at this. Since Jack's first awkward foray outside of that social closet, he has progressed in so many ways. It was easy to be reckless and carefree hanging out in Italy, both of you liberated from any binding expectations far from here. But this relaxed young man across from you perseveres in more familiar climes as well. This would be another miniature portrait, added to the others rendered in your mind since this day started. Thinking of portraits, you take a digital camera out of your purse and stare at it, scornful.

"Dammit," you mutter.

Jack reaches over, plucks the camera out of your hands before you toss it, useless, back into the purse from whence it came.

"Let's take a Turkey Day shot for posterity," he suggests, stretching his body across the table to place his face alongside yours, holding the camera out long, as far as his arm can reach beyond the circumference of you two. "Say brie! It's much fancier than just plain old cheese."

"Brieeee!" you call out as he snaps the picture.

Sliding back down into his seat, Jack clicks onto the image and shows it to you -- an extreme close-up of two faces, exuberant and beaming. The bright flash washes out your natural complexions, transforming them gleaming pale, and his left cheek is missing. But it's a perfect portrait of mischief, spontaneity, and warmth.

Jack gives the camera back then pulls out his iPod to settle in for a hermetic musical interlude, isolating himself from further conversation and any interruptions. He likes this makeshift "alone-time" with his tunes before facing the madness of the extended McPhee clan in Providence. It's what he always does, so you leave him alone to it.

Out the window, the landscape sprints by while another memory materializes. You and Jack at thirteen. The day of Brown's funeral, the two of you clutching at each other and crying. Your somber formal clothes, pressed and pristine that morning, in ruins from snot and salty tears, faces swollen, spilling over with sorrow. Oddly enough, this particular recollection springs forth simultaneous to a fresh instant of delight. But moments of joy are only truly appreciated in relation to those of deep sadness. Just as pleasure is not the opposite of pain but its extreme complement, as hate is just a virulent form of adoration, as passion is merely indifference set free.

Though your camera remained unused until now, throughout this day, you've collected memory portraits of several things. Laconic Dawson, struggling to cast off history's bonds, coercing relevance from long-time dreams perhaps out-dated. Vengeful Audrey, medicating her ills with a bottle, forlorn over a boy she could never really keep. Lively Jen, searching for love that was relevant and real, not tied to triangles and unworthy boys. Pensive Joey, longing for numerous adventures out in the world, while nurturing one constant thing in her heart. Resilient Pacey, transforming himself within every new opportunity, yet unchanged in his caring. Blithe Jack, enjoying a life he fought hard to enable, worth every emotional bruise it took to get there.

More keepsakes of Remember This to store away as you stride forward into Life, Unknown.

_You wouldn't have to ask,_ that's what Joey said to Pacey at the blow-out graduation party, senior year.

You were standing in a hallway, just within earshot, when he asked her a question he would never ask anyone else and truly mean.

_So hypothetically speaking... if I were lucky enough one day to find myself owning a sailboat again, and I were to ask the woman that I love to go sailing with me...would she?_

Though you've traveled far to get to remote destinations, you're still just that Meantime Girl, the one maneuvering through Life and Love, evolving a wistful cartography of her own. You don't need a landmark or a statue to remind you of your own revolutions. You don't need measurements, formal or informal, to see how far you've gone. You just need to know that the endpoint was inside you, all along. Because someday, you'd like to meet someone else, some boy-else, who will ask you a question like the one that blue-eyed boy asked of that tall, doe-eyed girl.

When Pacey gazed into your own eyes earlier, and that instant balanced upon a tightrope of thrilling connection, you saw a flicker. But it was not a spark.

A whole spectrum exists between a flicker and a spark. Significant differences separate them. The difference between attraction and passion. Between loving and being in love. Between a girl loving a boy; a woman loving a man.

Between meantimes and forever.

So everyone moves on, swirling in and around each other, thriving amongst every nascent in-between. Still, an undeniable fact stands out in your mind. As you speed toward Providence, leaving Boston behind, you know one sure thing.

For some, forever is only a matter of time.

**THE END**


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